Subject to Change: Season 2
by JadeEye
Summary: How do you foresee a separate stream of time? It branches off at one event, one thought, among trillions. Moon and Mask confront their pasts, their futures, and the sins that brought them together in this sequel to Subject to Change.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This and the next chapter are the first "episode," if you will, of the next season, where the action – well, as much action as this story ever gets – begins. It takes place after the Fiore arc, which serves as a sort of prologue, making it the equivalent of the Sailor Moon R season, where the Black Moon appeared. Those of you who are familiar with the season – which you all better be – also know that a certain pink-haired spore also makes her appearance…as does a certain chasm between Darien and Serena. Allow me to say that I HONESTLY did not intend for this chasm to occur in STC – in fact, a huge motive behind me beginning the story was that I wanted to change a lot of stuff I hated from the canon, and one of my biggest beefs was the Dare-Sere split in R. Alas, life throws curveballs…

Hi JadeEye reporting for duty! Heres the first chapter for Season 2 Of STC. Expect another chapter in a day or two. Oh. and just so you guys know these chapters that I will be posting up are chapters that she has had for a while, so after ch 4 I don't know how long it will take to get updates up. Just giving y'all a heads up. Please show some love to EightofSwords and leave a review. Oh yeah, can you guys please spread the word that STC is back up and running. Eight would really like it if you did. Ja ne!

Disclaimer: Even if I owned SM, they would have made me surrender the rights anyway for not meeting deadlines. I'm sorry the story takes so long!

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter One: Back to Square One

L

Motoki took a slurp from his root beer float. "I hate…clowns," he finished, taking another slurp.

His and Asanuma's heads swiveled expectantly toward Lita. "I hate…" She thought. "Underwires."

It was two hours past closing time at the Crown Arcade and Fruit Parlor. Two full days of freedom remained before school started up again. Motoki, Asanuma, and Lita were tryign to forget that impending doom by intoxicating themselves with root beer and a pointless game Asanuma had initiated, dubbed by the inventor himself as "I hate dot dot dot."

It was a mark of how late it was and how many root beers they had drunk (Asanuma: 5, Lita: 5, Motoki: 7) that Motoki did not turn red as a beet at what Lita had said, and that Lita had mentioned bras in front of two teenage boys at all. Instead, thanks to the root beer, they just chuckled a little and waited for Asanuma to take his turn.

Asanuma had just finished his fifth glass; he crooked a finger at Motoki and winked. Motoki heaved the new two-liter of root beer at his friend and dug the ice cream scoop into the vanilla to plop a scoop into Asanuma's glass.

Asanuma slurped up the foam hissing at the top of the glass and snorted as the bubble exploded in his nose. "I hate…" he announced, "Darien Shields. That bastard."

"Amen." Lita burped.

"I know…right?" Asanuma held out a hand to high-five Lita. She aimed carelessly, and only their pinkies collided. "Oh well…"

Motoki hiccoughed suddenly. "Aw, c'mon, guys…" Another hiccup. "You can't – "

"Bastard hasn't answered any of my phone calls!" Asanuma hit a fist on the counter, shaking the two-liter. "Not the doorbell either…" He burped, then grinned, pointing at Lita. "Ha ha! Beat you! Ow!" he exclaimed after Lita kicked his shin.

"He never answers when I call either," said Motoki mournfully, amidst a few hiccups. "And they never come to the arcade anymore…"

He looked at the calendar on the wall behind the counter. The past month was filled with pink and red X's. Each day Serena didn't come to the arcade had been marked with a pink X, the days Darien hadn't with a red X. The past three weeks were solid bars of red and pink X's.

Lita had remained conspicuously silent, slurping at her root beer. She finished the fifth and poured a fresh glass.

Motoki looked at her a little blearily. "Doesn't she talk to you, Lita?"

Lita paused in the middle of scooping ice cream. She hiccupped. "Sometimes."

"It's not…" Asanuma belched again, "right. They're supposed to be together. They didn't even fight. It was just that one…_burp_…day!"

"They looked so serious." Motoki stirred his float, the ice cream melting into the soda. "And then Darien left…and never came back."

"Serena neither." Asanuma shook his head.

Lita rested her chin on the counter and watched the bubbles climb to the surface of her soda. Up…pop. Up…pop. Up…pop. Serena and Darien…pop.

"Do you think they weren't meant to be, Lita?" Motoko sounded a little miserable, and the hiccup that punctuated the end of his question/sentence only added to the wretchedness.

Lita moved her head so it was her cheek instead of the cool counter instead of her chin. She didn't know what to tell Motoki. It wasn't just that she thought – she _knew_ they weren't meant to be. Serena had told her about the princess…

_"I slept in until nine o'clock today!" Lita reached her arms above her head, stretching them with a popping noise, and yawned. "I NEVER sleep in!"_

_"Motoki's been working you hard," said Serena beside her. She was swinging a shopping bag back and forth and Lita pushed her cart to the checkout counter. The swinging seemed forced and unnatural, as though Serena needed to be doing something with her hands, as though she wasn't used to having them free. Lita wondered if this was the first time she'd been to the grocery store without Darien._

_"Not really." Lita snuck a sideways glance at Serena as she said it. "You'd know if you came to the arcade once in a while."_

_The cheery smile on Serena's face faltered. _

_"Darien hasn't been in in a week, you know." Lita leafed through a magazine as she spoke, showing Serena she wasn't watching her. "You could come in."_

_"Motoki and Asanuma were his friends before they were mine," Serena said, smiling at the elderly cashier as he run up the totals. "I'm not going to evict him from his own headquarters."_

_Lita made a face, putting the magazine back on the shelf. "Huh?"_

_Serena took her change back from the chasier and bag back from the bagboy. "He stopped going because he knows I'm avoiding him. He was makign it easier for me by not going. But that's not fair to him."_

_"What I still don't get is why you're avoiding him," grumbled Lita. To the cashier, she said, "Oh, I want those kept out of the bags."_

_The cashier handed Lita her deluxe size bag of M&M's. Lita tore a corner open and poured out a rainow handful, offering it to Serena._

_"Thanks." Serena let Lita pour the handful into her smaller hand, popping a couple into her mouth._

_Lita sighed, shooting a sideward glance at Serena again. Apparently she hadn't picked up on the prompt to tell Lita why she was avoiding Darien. Probabyl she had and was just ignoring it. Lita kicked back another handful of candy, frowning fiercely._

_After a silence punctuated only by the beeps of the register and "have a nice day" of the cashier, the two girls walked outside._

_High summer had plopped down with the vengeance of an obese man, spilling heat over Tokyo that smothered its inhabitants like folds of fat._

_"Ugh." Lita put a hand on her abdomen. "I think I can feel the M&M's melting in my stomach." Sweat had already appeared in beads on her face. "It feels weird."_

_Serena, still on her first handful, grinned a little. "It probably looks like a chocolate fondue pot in there."_

_"Ooh, no imagery, please," groaned Lita._

_"You should stop wearing tank tops," observed Serena, who was herself still wearing one of the long-sleeved shirts she'd worn all summer. "You're going to get sun cancer."_

_"Skin cancer, you mean." Lita unchained her bicycle, slinging her bags into the basket behind the seat._

_"Oops." Serena poured the rest of the M&M's into her mouth and clambered onto her own bike, tugging at the hem of her shorts. "They're basically the same thing anyway."_

_"Basically," agreed Lita, tucking some hair behind her eat and kicking up the kickstand. "But my thought is that I can just transform and heal any cancer, don't you think?"_

_Serena shrugged, examining her own kickstand before she moved it up. "Maybe."_

_Lita shifted on her seat to peer at Serena. "You stil haven't changed yoru midn about transforming?"  
Serena shook her head. Her bangs had grown long, to her mouth, and they whipped her face. "No."_

_Lita nodded and began pedaling. Serena followed her. When they reached a stop sign and braked beside each other, Lita said, "You know, it's been almost two weeks."_

_The pedestrian sign lit up, and they began pedaling again. It was three more blocks before they reached another stop sign._

_"Are you ever gonna tell me?" Lita said._

_The next stop didn't come until Serena's house. Lita braked in front of the gate. Serena, too, halted, and peeled her helmet off, putting a foot down to prop herself up on the bike. _

_She looked up at Lita with her serious blue eyes. Lita caught a breath. She was finally going to tell her –_

_"Fiore didn't realize what he was doing."_

_Lita did not blink and frown the way she felt like doing, but instead nodded slowly. Then, carefully, she said, "It seemed like he did."_

_Serena dismounted from her bicycle. "He didn't."_

_ She hung her helmet on on of the handlebars. "When Kisenian came into me, I found out everything she'd done to him. He didn't realize what had all happened until Kisenian was takn out of him. The person doing all those things to us and Dar…Darien wasn't even Fiore. It was Kisenian."_

_"Well," said Lita, still picking her words carefully. "He couldn't help it."_

_"No," Serena agreed. "You can't."_

_Lita dismounted from her own bike. "What did she do to you, Serena?"_

_Serena didn't speak for a moment. She kicked down her kickstand. Then she began. "The second she's inside you, you practically don't even exist anymore. She finds out everything about you by turning into you. You find out everything about her by turning into her. Nothing's sacred at all." _

_Serena stiffened as though bracing herself and looked up at Lita. "Kisenian didn't have any knowledge about a Sailor Moon existing. She knew about a Senshi for every planet here, right down to their attacks and what kind of food they liked, but she had never heard of a Senshi for the Moon."_

_Lita listened but didn't say anything. She was still trying to figure out where this was going._

_"Mina – Sailor Venus – never recognized me. She thought I was here to kill the Moon Princess. Helios – he was alive in the Silver Milennium when the Moon Princess was alive, too, and he had never heard of a Sailor Moon, either. He thought I was here to hurt Darien. So did Kisenian."_

_Lita chewed on her cheek. She saw now where Serena was going – she though she was a danger to Darien because no one remembered her as a Senshi in the Silver Milennium. And that was – ridiculous. Of course it was._

_She flashed a convincing smile at Serena. "Helios was super-sheltered in Elsyion, though," she pointed out. "He doesn't even know what the Moon Princess looks like. I'm sure it doesn't mean anything. Plus, he didn't seem to have any problem with you when I saw him. He called you "dono!" Lita paused. "Besides, you don't have to avoid Darien just because you weren't a Senshi in the Silver Millennium. Right now and what you do now are what matter. And I feel like Mr. Rogers…" She rubbed her neck._

_Serena smiled at her, but it had all the genuineness of a dummy. "You're right, Lita."_

_"Really?" said Lita suspiciously. "So you'll stop avoiding Shields now?"_

_Serena's smile stayed in place, but it brittled. "Lita…if Motoki had a friend who was a girl, and he shared some sort of weird mental connection with her, how would you feel?"_

_Lita blinked. "Well, I don't think I'd have started dating him in the first place if he had a girl he was that involved with."_

_"Well, but if you did. I mean, if you knew for sure that you and Motoki were MEANT to be."_

_"Then I think I'd be wondering why that girl had the weird mental bond with him and I didn't," said Lita. "I'd also wonder if they were long-lost twins, if you know what I mean."_

_Serena groaned a little. "I wish Motoki hadn't shown you Star Wars."_

_Lita grinned a little but sobered. "Serena, what is this about?"_

_Serena twisted her hands a little. "Okay, suppose you're the Moon Princess, I'm the girl, and Darien's Motoki," she said. "Do you get what I'm talking about?"_

_"No, wait just a second." Lita held up a hand. "I'm trying to make Darien fit as sweet, darling, considerate, loveable, social, kind Motoki – "_

_"Darien's kind," said Serena a little defensively._

_"Well," said Lita. "I'm not really good with analogies, Serena. They're Toki's cup of tea. Why don't you just say it straight out?"_

_Serena stared at her for a minute, eyes wide and desperate. "Look, Darien's the PRINCE!" she finally said, her words bursting like popping balloons. "He's supposed to be with the Moon Princess, Lita! And I'm the girl with the weird rope bond with him who didn't exist in the past! Let's picture it – the moon princess finally comes along, and here I am – 'Sorry, Your Highness, I was just keeping him warm for you!' " Serena let out a strained laugh. "Do you get it, Lita?"_

_"No, I don't," said Lita firmly. "Look, Serena, in the first place, all Darien's ever said about the princess has been negative, at least as long as I've been around. It's not even just that he doesn't care about her; he actually dislikes her. You've heard him, he says she's annoying! And – " She cut off Serena as the blonde tried to say something. "And in the _second_ place, back in the Silver Millennium, it doesn't sound like the prince and princess were all that old, so what's to say it wasn't just a case of Nick and Jessica? _THIRD_, Shields isn't Endymion. He's _Darien_, who just HAPPENS to be the reincarnation of some guy named Endymion. They're not the same person. And fourth, Darien likes YOU more than anyone else. He loves Motoki and Asanuma, but he's obsessively protective of YOU. So I don't get why you're all of a sudden pretending he doesn't exist for the sake of a princess he doesn't love and who, furthermore may I add, may or may not ever show up?"_

_But Serena was shaking her head. "No, Lita, you don't understand – "_

_"Then tell me so I CAN understand, Serena!" Lita gripped her friend's shoulders. She was close to snapping. "How am I supposed to understand if you won't tell me the whole story?" She shook Serena by the shoulders. "Serena, God, you're my best friend, but if you won't tell me, I'm gonna go ask Shields!"_

_Serena let out an unhappy laugh. "You must really be desperate."_

_"I am," Lita said, softening at the wretched sound. "Serena, please just tell me."_

_"There's a prophecy about the Moon Princess." Serena looked down at her hands, which were a rainbow of the colors from the M&M's melting in her palm in the heat. "It's the reason Kisenian Blossom came here. She wanted to kill Darien – the Moon Princess, too, if she could find her, but her main goal was Prince Endymion. The prophecy said that the only person who would ever be able to defeat Chaos was the Moon Princess. But to do that, she has to be with her soulmate…"_

_Serena trailed off and looked at Lita miserably._

_"...Prince Endymion," Lita finished in a whisper, a horrible pit forming in her stomach. "…Darien. So they're – "_

_"Soulmates," finished Serena. "In all caps, italics, underlined, bolded, neon lighting. Soulmates are still meant to be even after reincarnation. Kisenian knew it, and when she…entered me…I…found it out, too." She smiled a little, bitterly._

_"Oh." Lita didn't know what to say, what to do. Her first instinct was to argue, but – _

_She pulled Serena into a hug._

_Serena pulled away. "I'm okay, Lita." She smiled up at her but without meeting her eyes. "I mean, it wasn't like…" she trailed off. "Well, I've got to help make dinner. See you later, Lita."_

_She wheeled her bike inside and latched the gate behind her. _

"Do you, Lita?" Motoki asked again. He didn't hiccup this time.

She forced her head back up off the counter and stood. "I think if they're meant to be together, they will be, somehow." What a lie. She might have believed it – if Darien hadn't been avoiding Serena the same was she was avoiding him. That, more than anything, seemed to cement the inevitable truth that Darien would be with the princess. Why else would he avoid Serena? Nothing else would make him avoid Serena… "I'm going home now."

"Al…" Asanuma burped, "ready?"

"Already." Lita put her glass in the industrial dishwasher, feeling a little unsteady on her feet and very, very bloated. She leaned over to peck Motoki on the cheek. "Asanuma, you better walk home tonight."

"Yes, Mother." Asanuma was slurring. She would hate to see him when he drank _real_ beer…

"Bye, Leets," murmured Motoki, lifting his glass to her as she pushed open the door.

As the door clicked shut behind her, he and Asanuma looked at each other.

Asanuma burped. "She knows. It – _burp_ – definitely has something to do with Senshi stuff."

Motoki did not reply, just stirred his melted float, aiming little static sparks into it.

Asanuma watched the sparks arc and dim. "Can you make crystals yet?"

Motoki shook his head, still stirring. Then he said, "There haven't been any more youma."

"Nope." Slurp.

"So maybe we should just tell them now."

Burp. "No way."

"But…" Motoki watched the soda swirl. "Maybe it would help, Numa. Like they'd have to put aside their differences to help us train…"

"We don't need help training!" Asanuma stabbed his straw into his glass. "We're doing fine on our own!"

"Speak for yourself," muttered Motoki. "I can't control mine at all."

"Cause yours is all physics-y," said Asanuma dismissively. "Conductors and not conductors and electrons and all that. Mine's just oxygen. Bam! Whoosh." He slumped progressively lower on his stool as he spoke, his feet finally touching the ground.

He stood, swaying a little. "I'm gonna go home now," he announced, as though to an audience, and walked toward the door.

Motoki sighed, standing also and taking both their glasses to put in the dishwasher.

"Hey."

Motoki turned around to see Asanuma poking his head in the door. "Yeah?"  
"Don't tell…right?"

Motoki sighed again. "I won't."

A grin flashed across Asanuma's face. "That's m'boy!"

The chimes tinkled as the door closed behind him.

Motoki closed the dishwasher and sighed. He'd never thought it before in his life, but he thought he would be glad when school started this year. Surely they wouldn't all be able to avoid and tiptoe past each other once they were all on campus…

L

Michiru lowered her sunglasses to the edge of her nose as they turned onto a main street. "How quaint," she said in her soft, sweet voice that Rei could never gauge the true meaning behind. "That park, how adorable! A wonderful place to raise a child, don't you think, Haruka?"

"I don't think little Miss Rei would sit in a swing unless we handcuffed her to it," said Haruka, glancing at the rearview mirror.

Rei did not give her the pleasure of looking back. She continued to stare out of the window, at the familiar streets and the familiar pedestrians walking down them. That girl had gone to school with her and carried a bright pink bag, and that man had come often to the shrine to pray for his wife's health after she was diagnosed with cancer… there was the candy store that a youma had once attacked, and the tennis courts where another youma had turned Serena into a human tennis ball…and the phantoms that walked these streets, men in military uniforms and youma, a child running…

She sat forward suddenly, hand slapping against the glass of the window. The vision faded. She sat back, lowering her hand.

"Memory lane for you, isn't it?" Haruka had noticed, and now she gibed Rei, mistaking the cause of her sudden movement. "Just remember what we're here for."

"Now, Haruka." Michiru laughed. "Rei knows what will happen if she tries to contact her friends."

And there was the road that led to the shrine; they were approaching it, they were in front of it, they were passing it…

Rei turned away from the window and glared into the rearview mirror at the occupants of the front seat. "I already told you. They're not my friends."

Haruka met her eyes in the mirror. "I guess we'll see."

L


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Like I said last chapter…I really, really didn't plan for this to happen…

Review please! I'll post up two more chapters on Friday...hopefully. For now, enjoy the show.

Disclaimer: I don't own it. I'd be lynched if I did!

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Two: The End of Summer

L

"I really am so sorry about this!" Mayuko Iwara bustled about the back room of the dress shop, snatching up needles and spools of thread. "They called and needed an immediate alteration – on a wedding gown!"

"It's no trouble at all, Mayuko-san." Serena set her knapsack down behind the counter, watching the older woman's hasty movements to and fro. "Do you need any help?"

"No – no, I think I have everything." Buji's mother clutched the bag of sewing necessities to her chest. "I just – it's a _wedding gown_!" She turned huge brown eyes, the same ones that Buji had inherited, on Serena. "For a wedding _tonight!_ What if I ruin the dress?"

"Mayuko-san, you could never ruin anything." Serena shook her head, smiling at Buji's mother. "It's juat an alteration. You can do those with your eyes closed! You'll make it beautiful, you'll see."

"Yeah, seriously, Mom." Buji closed the book he'd been reading and joined in on the reassurance pow-wow, crossing his arms and looking seriously up at his mom.

Iwara smiled, still a little hesistantly – but her smiles were usually hesitant. "Okay," she said. "I'll be back as soon as I can – "

"No rush!" Serena waved from behind the counter as Iwara hurried from the shop.

"Sheesh." Buji stuck his book in his Power Rangers backpack. "You'd think she was running off to fix the empress's dress."

"Every girl is an empress on her wedding day!" said Serena. "Make sure you remember that for when _you_ get married, Buji-kun." She climbed onto the stool behind the cash register.

It was a Saturday, the last Saturday before school started up again. Two of Mayuko's employees were on vacation this week, and the other had gone into premature labor two days before, leaving Mayuko to man the store herself. Then she'd received a call from one of her best clients needing an emergency alteration for her niece's wedding dress. Mayuko had called Serena in a flurry of apologies and barely-blanketed panic to ask if she could watch both Buji and the shop.

Serena sighed, looking around. The store was more exciting when you were the customer, she decided, watching people walk by outside.

The clock on the wall ticked. Then ticked again. Then again.

Serena sighed again and looked down at Buji. "What do you do in here all day?"

Buji looked up at Serena from the Power Ranger action figure in his hand. "Be bored." He pointed at his backpack on the shelf behind her. "After lunch I read. There's some books in there if you want."

More out of boredom than an actual desire to read, Serena pulled two books out of the bag. Her eyes widened as she looked down at them. "Buji, these are thick!"

"Yeah, Mom picked them out." Buji pulled a green ranger out of his pocket to fight the red ranger figurine. "She always buys one book she chooses, and then I get to choose one, and I have to read both of them before she gets me a new one." He put the power rangers down and stood up on his tiptoes to look at the books on the counter with Serena. He pointed at _The Count of Monte Cristo_. "That one's pretty good. I like it better than the _Three Musketeers_ one."

Serena felt a little embarrassed. _The Count of Monte Cristo_ had been one of the books they'd read in her English class last year, but she hadn't actually read it, just skimmed the synopses online because she thought the book was too big and boring.

"You know the one I really like?" Buji said, eyes bright, He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. "_Robinson Crusoe_! Have you read it?"

"The picture book version," said Serena, a little red in her cheeks.

Buji grinned at her, clearly seeing her train fo thought. "There's a manga version of it if you want to read that, onee-chan."

"Ha ha." Serena gave him a noogie, right in the center part of his bouncy brown curls. "Yuk it up, Honey-bunny!" He giggled, gasping, until she released him. "So what have you been up to this summer? I haven't seen you in…"

"A month," said Buji, picking up his action figures from the floor.

"A month," Serena repeated, eyes unfocusing. A little bit less than a month ago Kisenian Blossom had attacked them, Fiore had died, and they had found out about the prophecy with the princess…it had been nearly a month since she'd seen Darien. Only a month? It felt so much longer.

"Earth to onee-chan," said Buji, waving a hand in front of her face. "Heads up, there's a customer.

"Oh!" Serena snapped back to awareness with a smile and looked toward the entrance immediately. "Hello! May I help you?"

It was a tall, bright-haired woman with her daughter, a young girl wearing a frown and long sleeves with pants, all dark-colored. Goth, Serena thought immediately, then caught a glimpse of her own reflection in one of the mirrors placed throughout the shop. She smiled a little sheepishly, seeing the long-sleeved purple shirt she herself was wearing. Pot calling the kettle black much?

"Hello," said the woman, but the girl stalked into the shop ahead of her.

"I can do it myself!" she snapped over her shoulder at her mother.

Teenage rebellion, Serena thought, feeling sorry for the mother. In the back of her mind, she wondered what Buji would act like when he reached that age.

The mother went to wait outside while the girl approached the counter, hands stuck in her pockets and staring at the floor. "I need a dress for a wedding," she mumbled.

Serena hopped down from her stool. "Okay! Are you looking for a particular color? Watch the register for me, please, Buji-sama," she added with exaggerated formality to Buji, who had clearly just been waiting to pounce on the tall stool. He scrambled up onto it and flashed her a grin.

"I don't care," muttered the girl, head down so that her hair hid her face, waiting for Serena to lead her somewhere. "Just – it needs to have long sleeves. And a long skirt."

"Hmm," said Serena. Was this dress for a wedding or a funeral? "I'm not sure we have anything like that in your size, but we'll check. Please come with me."

She led the girl to the back corner of the store, which Serena had dubbed in her mind the Senior Citizen section. Mayuko-san's most conservative fashions were here, though thankfully none of the suit-skirt ensembles that Serena thought so hideous and that grandmothers seemed to favor so much were present.

She moved immediately to the smallest size section and leafed through. She found two long-sleeved, reasonably long-skirted dresses, one pale pink and the other green and blue.

She straightened, holding them up. "Would you like to try them again?" she asked unnecessarily.

The girl took the dresses from her without lifting her eyes. A thought hit Serena – maybe she wouldn't look up because of her scars. Her stomach twisted a little.

"I'll go check the rest of the store," Serena said quickly, unlocking on eof the changing rooms for the girl.

She tried to push the sting away as she moved quickly to the juniors' section to look through the selection there. She found a puffy-sleeved violet dress with an empire waist and sweeping long skirt and tried not to think about her scars.

"Buji, does your mom sell gloves?" she called.

"Yeah, they're up here."

She found the rack of evening gloves near the counter and looked through them. She found a long, past-the-elbow pair in a light violet shade that matched the lining of the gown she had found.

"Onee-chan." She looked up at Buji's voice. He was staring at her intently. "Are you okay?"

His intent gaze only made her more aware of the scars on her face. "Me? I'm fine!" She laughed and hurried away toward the fitting rooms. She should have gotten over the scars by now; she should have grown immune to the stares and double takes; she should have matured enough to disregard other people's reactions! She was vain, she was superficial –

A muffled shriek popped her increasingly agitated thoughts and brought her eyes flying up. The girl stood in the changing room before her with one of the dresses clutched to her chest like a shield and wearing only her underwear and a bra. Serena realized she had barged right into the changing room without even knocking.

Her cheeks flooded with color. "Oh my God! I'm so sorry!" Even as she blurted it out, her eyes were widening, inexorably drawn to the sight before her – to the scars. There were long, mottled scars running up and down the girl's arms and legs like third-degree burns.

Her brain howled at her to shut the darn door already, but her feet planted themselves to the ground. "I – I thought you might like this outfit," she blurted out lamely, forcing her eyes to the girl's face.

For the first time, the girl was looking right back at her. Her eyes were violet, just like Rei's, and for a minute, Serena's heart skipped. Then it started again, laughing at her. This girl wasn't Rei! Her hair was a different texture, and the face was more vulnerable in its features, not Rei's delicate belligerence.

The girl stared at Serena – no, at the scars on her face. Serena wasn't sure what to do.

"I'm so sorry!" she blurted out again, and rushed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Her eyes met Buji's as she wilted outside the changing room, hands on her knees. They stared at each other for a long minute. Then Buji shook his head.

"What did you do this time, onee-chan?"

Serena winced and glanced outside. The girl's mother was sitting on the bench outside with a magazine, apparently oblivious to what had just happened, thank goodness.

Behind her, the door clicked. Serena spun.

The girl handed her all three of the dresses. For a long, eternal moment in which Serena's blood roared in her ears, her purple eyes stared the short distance up to Serena's.

Then she said, "I want the purple one, please, with the gloves."

Serena's eyes snapped wide. "R- really?"

The girl stuffed her hands in her pants again, looking away. "Yeah."

"R-right this way, then," gabbled Serena quickly, hastening to the counter. She set the two reject dresses down and scanned the selected items. "I – I really am sorry about – " She flushed. "Doing that."

"You're the girl who got attacked by the youma."

Serena's eyes flicked back to the girl. For a minute, she felt a stab of some unhappy emotion. Then a flame of happiness licked her. This girl had scars, too – she knew what it was like. She wasn't mocking Serena. They were kin, in a way.

She nodded. "Uh-huh."

The girl handed her a large wad of cash. It reminded Serena of Lita and the time they'd gone uniform shopping. "They're – pretty, kind of," she said, looking down again. "The silver, I mean."

Confusion, then genuine warmth flooded Serena. It was strange, but – she believed that the girl was sincere, in her own strange way. She smiled. "Thanks!"

She handed the girl her change and a bag with everything in it. As the girl took the bag, Serena said, a little shyly, "I think you'll look beautiful at the wedding."

The girl's eyes snapped up to hers. Serena smiled tentatively. She was rewarded with an upward quirk of lips. Then she turned and left. Serena watched her walk outside to her mother, who stood and placed a hand on her shoulder. The girl knocked it away and continued walking. Serena did a face-fault. _Oh, well, she turned nice to me…_

A little finger poked her in the ribs, and she turned to see Buji, arms crossed, regarding her. "What was all that about?"

Serena shook her head. "Nothing." She smiled. "Wasn't she nice, though?"

"She looked familiar," said Buji, brows furrowing.

Serena's smile faded. _Yeah, she looked like Rei_. Where was Rei now? And Ami? Not to mention Luna. It was as though they'd all dropped off the face of the planet…

"Why isn't Darien-baka with you today, onee-chan?" asked Buji suddenly.

Serena blanched. "Why would any teenage boy voluntarily spend a day in a dress shop?" she joked, trying to distract him.

"Why haven't you been at the arcade, either?" demanded Buji. "Are you two fighting?"

Serena wished for something to do with her hands. A rag to wipe the counter with like Motoki did. "Why would you think that?"

"I – "

Buji was cut off by the sound of laughter at the entrance. A group of giggling girls wandered into the shop, cooing over the dresses. Serena moved quickly to help them. And luck took pity on her the rest of the day, filling the shop with a constant stream of customers so that Buji didn't get the chance to interrogate her anymore.

L

"Paper or plastic, sir?"

Darien pulled his wallet from his pocket, withdrawing his debit card. "Plastic."

"Your total comes to thirty-one fifty-two."

Darien slid the card through the slot and tapped in his pin number, thankful for the numerous times had had done it before his sight vanished.

"By the way…is Serena sick?"

Though Darien's ears caught the sound of Serena's name immediately, it took a moment before he realized the bagboy was speaking to him.

"Serena?" he repeated, trying to gather his thoughts.

"Yeah. Is she okay? I noticed she hasn't come in with you lately – "

"She came in in the morning a few days ago." This was the elderly cashier's voice, raspy and dry. "If you woke up early enough to take the morning shift, you'd see her, Romeo."

Darien cleared his throat. "My bags, please?"

"Oh, yeah!" Darien felt his arms being weighted down with the grocery bags. "Do you want any help with those – ?"

Darien waved off the assistance with an impatient hand and stepped out of the checkout lane. He regretted it not a minute later, when he collided with someone. Damn.

"Sorry, excuse me," he said quickly, sidestepping them and quickening his pace for the door, cane before him. He should have been able to sense the person, no, would have been able to sense them if the damned bagboy hadn't distracted him by mentioning Serena –

Bump. "Sorry," Darien snapped, doubly aggravated that he'd been turned the helpless blind guy twice in as many minutes.

Whoever he had bumped into this time took a breath to snap something back, Darien felt the intake of air, but then stopped; he felt that, too, the stilling of air. They'd caught sight of his white-tipped cane and his eyes and backed off quickly. He wished they wouldn't. He was sick of people crossing the street just to avoid him, the freaky blind guy who lived in the neighborhood. He wanted someone, anyone, to pick a fight with him. He wanted some righteous anger, some violence.

But no one did, and he made it to his apartment without incident. He kicked the door open with a foot and slammed it shut behind him with a foot, dropping the bags unceremoniously down on the counter.

He sighed and dug a hand into his hair. A voice in his head remarked that he was going to go prematurely bald if he kept that up, but he ignored it. There were so many voices in his head lately that the only way to survive was to ignore all of them. He hissed out air through clenched teeth, slamming his back against the counter and leaning there, arms crossed tightly.

He was going to do something he'd regret if he stayed here, all annoyed and hot under the collar and peeved like this. He'd learned that three weeks ago, when somehow, unconsciously, he made his punching bag combust in his face. His eyebrows, Helios told him, were still rather…invisible.

Darien shoved a hand into his subspace pocket. His fingers closed around the spiky shape of the Golden Crystal. He concentrated…

Unconciously, his eyes had drifted shut. When they opened again, the flowery field of Elysion greeted him. Nauseatingly bright, he thought. Then dug his hand into his hair.

He knew this wasn't how he was supposed to think, to feel. He'd done his time in the Star Wars fandom as a preteen; he recognized the Dark Side when he saw it. Resenting every breath drawn by the people around him, itching to fight, to draw blood, to feel pain in return, annoyed by the slightest thing, wanting to burn, burn everything – that was him in these past weeks.

He realized it, he recognized it, he could diagnose it; he could not stop it. It was like being able to see the cobra slithering toward you but being unable to move because its poison had already paralyzed your body. Darien knew he was falling into a pit he did not want to be in, should not be in, could not afford to be in; he knew it was because he did not want to be Endymion, did not want to love the princess, was sick of being apart from Serena, disgusted at himself for wanting to inflict his presence on Serena, angry with Serena for avoiding him, for abandoning him, disgusted at himself for hating Fiore for being weak enough to bring Kisenian here and bursting their happy bubble of ignorance, hateful toward Helios for treating him like the prince he was not, irritated by Motoki and Asanuma's constant calls, hurt by the fact that they didn't try just that little bit harder, break his door down to get to him, afraid that who he truly was was Endymion and that he was stuck, chained to that identity and that princess and that Motoki and Numa and even Kino and most of all Serena would float away from him like Fiore had floated away that day so long ago, or even worse that Endymion would take him over and he actually would fall in love with the princess and forget about Motoki and Numa and Kino and Odango, and they would be no more to him than his parents were, holes in his memory, people he knew existed but gave little care or thought to…

Night after day after dusk after night after dawn after noon after night the overwhelming torrent of fear, confusion, rage, hatred, disgust, poured into him, flooded him. He felt as though he was treading water in a monstrous sea of black ink, and the ink was seeping into him, into his very cells, staining him, dyeing him dark until he could no longer tell where he ended and the sleepless nights began. It filled him until it choked him and wrung his organs and made him want to vomit himself up so that he could be _clean_.

The only satisfaction – and satisfaction he did yank from it, like a man yanking a tooth from the shark that has bitten his legs off – was that this dirtiness inside him, the hate and disgusting feelings that stained his soul made him unworthy of Serena. It was because of these, and not because of the princess, that he could not be with her; it was because of his darkness, his wretchedness, that he did not try to see her while she avoided him; it was because he would not pollute her with himself that he avoided her the way she avoided him, and not because of the god.damned.princess. And while he was black as pitch, black as sin, he would tar the Moon Princess with this sin, too, and because it was not Serena he was blackening he did not care. He did not care that even did the princess not exist he would not be able to be with Serena anyway because he was too stained for her.

"Your agitation wilts the flowers, Endymion-sama."

At the misappellation, Darien's annoyance flared again. Then he slammed it down quickly, forcing himself to inhale as he saw the leaves of the flowers surrounding him curling and yellowing.

"I am sorry. Darien-sama," Helios corrected himself quietly, stopping several meters away from Darien. Behind him, his wings were folded against his back but quivering slightly, the white feathers ruffling up and down though there was no wind. The Elysion priest had regained his human form after transforming into a unicorn again to take Serena to Kisenian, but the wings had remained, stubborn and unmorphable. Darien had not asked why Helios had been unable to banish them, and Helios had volunteered no explanation. It was one of many subjects they did not, by unspoken agreement, discuss. Like all subjects linked to Serena.

Darien crouched and pressed a palm to the cool, rich soil between a yellow carnation and blood-red tulip. A green seedling sprouted, twisting between his fingers, then swelled and split, disgorging a wooden staff his height for him.

He caught it in his hand and stood up. "Spar with me, Helios."

Helios set down the silver trowel he had held but made no move to summon a staff. "Darien-sama, I must ask that you sleep."

Ignoring him, Darien merely knelt and summoned a second staff. He tossed it to Helios.

The priest caught it but placed it carefully back down on the ground. "You have come here every night for nigh on a month, Darien-sama. This is the land of dreams, but you must walk within your own dreams from time to time. It is not healthy for you to evade slumber this way." He paused, then said more quietly, "Nor is it healthy for you to evade your companions."

Darien's lip twitched. A thin column of soil rose from the ground, lifting the staff of wood and forcing it into Helios's hands. "When I feel like health advice, I'll see a doctor."

With that he lunged forward, forcing Helios to parry with his staff or have his skull cracked in two.

L

"Serena-san! Thank you so much!" Mayuko flew back into the store, her dark hair falling out of a messy bun and her cheeks flushed.

Serena bowed to the last customer, handing them their bag and reciept. "Thank you for shopping here!" Then she turned to Buji's mother. "Mayuko-san! How did it go?"

"Beautifully! She looked beautiful, just like you said!" Mayuko grabbed Buji from the back, squeezing him into a tight hug and eliciting a grimace from him. "And now the bride's sister wants me to design her wedding dress, too, for this winter – "

"Sugoi!" Serena clapped her hands.

"And, well, that made me think!" Mayuko released Buji, but only to fly to Serena and clasp her hands in hers. "Serena-san, I know – I know it's quite early to ask, but… " She bit her lip and averted her eyes from Serena's, then forced them back. "May I have the honor of sewing your wedding dress when you're married?"

Serena's face turned red. Then white.

Buji exploded into laughter. His Red Ranger action figure went flying. It bonked Serena on the head, squarely between her odangoes, and she blinked.

"Buji!" Mayuko whirled on her son, eyebrows furrowed. But she spun aroudn again when Serena spoke.

"That would make me so happy, Mayuko-san!"

Mayuko stared at Serena. The blonde girl who seemed like such an ethereal mixture of child and adult was smiling at her brightly.

"R-really?" Mayuko stammered. Serena nodded, now clasping Mayuko's hands in hers. "Thank you, Serena-san!" She smiled, tears springing suddenly into her eyes. She swiped at them, embarrassed; all the stress of the day, and now that stress gone, and then what she'd found out… "You've been so wonderful to Buji and I, Serena-san! You and Shields-san both!"

Buji's head whipped up. Serena slapped on a wider smile. "Oh, we don't do anything! Buji's lots of fun! But – sorry to leave so rudely – I have to go, meet Lita now, you know – "

"Oh! Of course!" Mayuko launched into a fresh string of apologies for asking Serena to do this today and thank you's for doing it, and Serena ducked away amidst them, waving a hand in cheerful "it was nothing, no problem at all."

She forced a skip into her step as she passed the fountain, which she knew there was an excellent view of from Mayuko's shop. It was not until she had reached the food court that she allowed the sigh from her lungs and her shoulders to droop.

Shuffling over to the cookie shop, she craned her head back to scan the menu. Then she shuffled closer, standing on her toptoes and placing a hand on the counter. "Um…excuse me?"

The cashier, probably a university student, came over, smiling. Serena saw the little flicker in his smile as he took in her scars. He covered it quickly, though. They usually did. "H-how may I help you?"

"Do you sell cookie dough?" Serena asked.

The cashir blinked. Then he looked at her again. "Uh – let me check." He disappeared into the back room.

Serena scuffed her shoe against the floor until he returned, then pinned him with a hopeful look.

He smiled at her. A pitying smile. "How much would you like?"

"Oh, like five cookies' worth, I guess?" said Serena. "Chocolate chip, please."

The cashier returned with a small, colorful tin. "Four twenty-five."

Serena forked over the money, then took her tin and went to sit on the lip of the fountain in the center of the mall. She sat there, swinging her legs and putting little balls of cookie dough into her mouth as she stared into space.

_"Serena-san, I know – I know it's quite early to ask, but…may I have the honor of sewing your wedding dress when you're married?"_

Her scars weren't so visible in the fountain water reflection when she leaned over it. They blended into the ripples made by water pouring into the pool by the fountainstream.

She bit into another ball of cookie dough. But she felt the scars when she talked to Lita and when she smiled at her parents and when she cried in her bed. She felt them when people's smiles flickered as they caught sight of her. When they avoided looking at her. What man would ever want to marry a girl he couldn't even look in the face without wincing? He'd have to be blind…

_"You've been so wonderful to Buji and I, Serena-san. You and Shields-san both."_

She lowered the bite of cookie dough she'd been about to sink her teeth into from her mouth. She didn't feel like eating, suddenly.

_"Why isn't Darien-baka with you today, onee-chan? Are you two fighting?"_

_"When you spoke of her I feared she might be High Senshi."_

Nearly every night she reached for the rope. Sometimes before she fell asleep, sometimes after she woke up from a nightmare, sometimes when she woke up in the grey light of dawn. But always, always, she reached for the rope – the snatched her hand back, just in time.

"_You must understand how famously strong the bond between the prince and princess was."_

She was selfish. The most selfish person there'd ever been. Not only was she a potential danger to him, but he was meant for the Moon Princess, and still she wanted to ignore those things and see his eyebrows raised at her again, the secret grin he shot her sometimes, his soothing irritation and concern burning from the rope.

_"I, myself, was scarcely able to believe that Endymion-sama is no longer able to sense the princess."_

That was because of her. That was her fault. She knew it was her fault, because of the rope, and yet she still wanted to keep using it, despite the fact that Darien must love the princess, and the princess loved him, and oh, yes, that small detail of the whole universe depending on a reunion between the two of them.

She curled her legs up to her chest, digging her forehead into her kneecaps. So selfish…so selfish…at night, when she tried to escape Kisenian's phantom presence inside her, all the could see was his face that night, shoved against hers, that night before it all went askew.

_"No, listen to me. Wouldn't you miss me if I left?"_

But he, _he_ had left her, that day in the arcade, and she'd watched his back disappear, and he hadn't tried to see her since…

She unfolded her legs and closed the cookie tin lid slowly.

_"Serena-san, I know it's quite early to ask, but may I have the honor of sewing your wedding dress when you're married?"_

The change from the cookie dough was still in her pocket. She took it out and threw it into the fountain, shattering her reflection into dozens of ripples.

"Sorry, Mayuko-san," she whispered to the gurgle of the water. "Maybe you'll be able to make the princess's wedding dress instead."

L

"I believe this is enough for today, Endym – Darien-sama." Helios rose from his crouch and brushed crumbs of soil from the white fabric of his tunic. The faintest spots of pink had penetrated his fair face.

"You're not sweating yet," returned Darien in sharp pants. An hour of sparring had not flushed the restless energy from his brain; he still felt jumpy and aggressive and itchy to slam the staff down again.

"This is Elysion. One does not perspire here."

Helios's words penetrated Darien's mind on only one level, the very top, most superficial one; his reply was automatic as he swiped the perspiration from his face with a handful of shirt. "I'm sweating."

"You, Endymion-sama, are an exception to many rules."

Helios unfurled his feathery wings and snapped them out, flapping so that they sent gusts of air across Darien. His clothes stuck to his skin and made him feel even more trapped.

"One apparently being the speed of learning. Your skills with staff and sword have improved very quickly."

Darien peeled his shirt from his chest and held the cool inside of his wrist against his forehead. True, he was absorbing a bit of swordplay – how he needed to brace his arm at certain times, relax it at other – but when Helios actually poured on the seriousness in sparring with him, that other being inside him, the leviathan he had come to realize was Endymion, rose up and controlled his arm, gripping the sword through his skin, twitching his limbs from Helios's blows as though with puppet strings. It was not him, nothing was him; he was just like Fiore had been in that respect, controlled by something inside him yet not entirely of him, but yet Endymion _was_ him –

"I myself have little experience in weaponry, however." Helios stabbed his staff into the ground; it darkened and lengthened, spreading, and became a tree forming a ceiling of leaves above them. The lightest blanket of dappled shade fell over the flowers. "As a priest, I was not encouraged to learn the art of killing."

Darien switched wrists, closing his eyes momentarily at the coolness. "Imagine that."

Helios's smile was faint, like sunlight hidden behind a cloud. "Yes. The honor of learning and practicing warfare with you belonged to the Shittenou."

"Jadeite, Nephrite, Zoicite, and Malachite." Darien had heard this all before. He hadn't come for a history lesson. "All dead now, so you're all I've got." He pulled his cane-blade from his subspace pocket. "Sword time?"  
"Perhaps not dead." Helios's voice was quiet, as it always was, but gripped Darien's attention like a shout. He turned back to the white-haired priest.

"Not dead?" he repeated, fear wriggling into him like a parasite. No, but they were dead, Jadeite by plane, Nephrite by Zoicite, Zoicite by Zoicite, and Malachite by Mars and stalagmites. He'd seen three of them die before his own eyes, and heard Kino's testimony of the last. Four generals, once Endymion's Shittenou, then Beryl's minions, all four of whom had attempted to kill Serena multiple times… "I saw them die."

"You died, Endymion-sama." Helios's voice were solemn, his eyes the same as he bored into him. "Yet here you stand."

"No, here Darien Shields stands," Darien said, the sharpness in his voice masking the confidence he did not feel. "I'm not Endymion."

Helios retreated. "Yes. Forgive me, Darien-sama."

Darien forced his hand away from his head. "And?" he prompted impatiently.

Helios did not lift his head from where he head lowered it. "On a wind yesterday when you left…"

Helios heard prophecies – usually fragements of them, rather – on the breezes that blew in Elysion. It was one of the main tasks of the preist of Elysion, he had told Darien, and part of the reason that the realm was guarded so fiercely by Endymion's forefathers.

"I think…" Helios lifted his head. "That the Shittenou have returned. Or so it seemed to purport. It mixed with another wind, became distorted – "

But Darien was not listening anymore. A rush of adrenaline spurted into his bloodstream. "Returned?" he repeated again. "Which ones? The bad ones or Endymion's?" He asked the question as mere formality; he no more believed that "good" Shittenou had returned than he believed Luna had meant well for Serena.

But Helios was shaking his head. "I do not know, Darien-sama. There was a wind – "

Darien was already closing his eyes. "Then find out!" he ordered before melting out of Elysion.

Back in his room, the black veil drawn over his vision once more, he paused, tucking the Golden Crystal back into his subspace pocket. His mind raced with the images of Zoicite with her hands around Serena's throat, Zoicite sending crystal shards shooting at her, Nephrite siccing roaring lions on her – he had to protect her, but she was avoiding him, not letting him near her; he couldn't camp out in her tree this time now that he'd found out that she sensed him when he was there. Except maybe since she had forsaken all use of the rope, she might not sense him? Then…

By now he was wrenching open the sliding glass door to his balcony, Golden Crystal in hand. How would the Shittenou have returned to life anyway? Did that mean Beryl had somehow come back to life, too, or did they do it on their own? Did Beryl's death somehow release them? Had they faked their own deaths to come back and get vengeance? Darien realized with growing unsettlement that the only one whose dead body he had ever seen was Zoicite: Jadeite had merely disappeared, Nephrite had disappeared into glimmers of light, and he had felt but not seen Malachite's death.

All this added up to the conclusion that he really should go check on Serena. He was justified in doing so.

But all he could see, in his mind's eye, was the anger hardening her features when he took her that second – and last – time to Elysion, and she snapped at him. All he could hear was the hatred boiling in her voice when he brought her back.

He sat on the floor of his balcony with his forehead pressed against the railing bar. His ears were perked, strained for sound, to pick up any scream that might signal the return of the Shittenou, as he tried to tangle through all of Serena's actions – or lack thereof – toward him in the past month, tried to decide whether going would hurt more than it helped. He was a coward, he would admit it, he was more afraid of her hating him than he was of the generals going after her…

The bell in a church some hundred kilometers away began to toll the hour; Darien heard it faintly with his sharpened hearing, gonging deep in his ears. Each stroke seemed to dislodge a little more of his resolve, like a book beign slowly knocked, centimeter by centimeter, from a shelf, until finally twelve struck and he could no longer resist the urge to go check on Serena, nor cower before the fear that gnawed at him.

He rose fluidly, tuxedo materializing around him, and leapt, pushing the swirl of Serena that washed around him away. She must not sense him. Nor did he want to sense her, and that she was safe, for then there would be less justification in his going to check on her…

His jumping tonight was perhaps more reckless than it usually was, less calculated, and he didn't bother rectifying it.

He stopped a few roofs away from her house on a tree branch and through its leaves sent a whispering message to the oak tree that stood guard outside Serena's window.

It responded to him that she was asleep.

Only then did Darien dare come closer, landing on the familiar branch that had cradled him for so many nights. The tree was well-acquainted with him, and it offered to him a branch to rest his back against that he declined. He wanted something else, he informed it.

Comprehending, the tree offered him two leaves. Darien held them carefully between his fingertips and bent his head close to exhale slowly on one leaf's underside, allowing his carbon-dioxide-rich breath to gust across the leaf's stomata. Releasing that leaf, he snapped the second from its stem.

He touched the sap oozing from its broken stem to his tongue. A single image, the one he had asked the tree for, coalesced in his mind's eye. Serena's bedroom, neat and tidy as he had never seen it. That was something peripherally noted, however, as he focused on the small shape beneath the covers. Serena was curled in a ball, blankets up to her ears, and her hair covering the rest of her face.

No Shittenou, then. She was fine, sleeping with her chest rising peacefully up and down.

Yet as the image began to fade, he touched the sap to his tongue again, returning the image to full clarity.

Darien's focused on Serena's nighttable, manipulating the image on his mind's eye. There was her star-shaped alarm clock, and there was also a glass of water, and beside it, a stick of celery.

Her words from earlier that year drifted through his mind like a phantom.

_"Celery's good for getting the taste of blood out of your mouth."_

He sat back on his heels and let the snapped leaf flutter from his fingertips. "Odango…"

L

Usually her midnight snack of celery helped. She had the nightmare, she woke up, she ate celery, she drifted back to sleep and slumbered peacefully until morning.

Tonight her celery failed her. Serena woke again not half an hour later, a scream raw in her throat and the sensation of thick, gushing lumps of blood sour and fresh in her mouth. She retched, tangled among the blankets, crawling from the moonlight that spilled across her bed.

Sweat had glued her bangs to her face like a mask. She clawed them away, hand atremble as she scrabbled for the glass of water on her nightstand. She found it and gulped at it like a man stranded in the desert; her shaking fingers splashed half of it onto her face and down her front; she flinched at the sudden coldness and spilled the rest.

Nausea swirled in her stomach like a black hole. She curled up into a ball, hair hot and sticky against her skin. Something felt different. She could not think past the nausea, the salty blood, could not think what it was, but it was different, and that thought drove deeper and deeper into her mind as slumber sucked her deeper and deeper into its embrace. She struggled against it feebly and hovered between sleep and waking for the rest of the night, torn between the fog that encroached on her vision and the salty blood that licked at the back of her throat, and the graying sky and hot, stale air.

Sunlight arrived, at last, and she kicked off her blanket. Cool air rushed in to revive her. She swallowed, again and again, forcing herself off of her bed, that coffin of nightmares.

It hit her, then, the identity of that something that had felt different during the night. Without the nausea smothering her, she could see it now clear as day, and could not believe she had not realized what it was before.

She tottered to her window and wreched it open. A breath of muggy but fresh air wafted in to press against her skin; she barely noticed it past the sight that greeted her eyes. Darien, Tuxedo Mask, curled up in the crook of a limb in her oak tree.

The nightmares made sense now. He had been here nearly all night; that was why the celery had been unable to banish them. They were always stronger, more intense, when he was near her as she slept. Serena did not let herself wonder why that was.

What she did force herself to wonder was why he'd spend the night in her tree. He'd been avoiding her as much as she'd been avoiding him; else he would have been camping out in her tree every night for the past month. Why was he here now? Had he perhaps realized – No. Serena shoved the idiotic thought aside, irritation with herself bubbling up inside her.

The irritation steered her thoughts back to what to do. Logically, she could close the window again, draw the drapes, get dressed, and leave the house. However, Darien, she knew, rarely did anything without reason – i.e., emotionally. Which meant that he was here for some sort of reason that had nothing to do with trying to rekindle their friendship, which meant that she was safe to stay here and listen to what that was. Or rather, he was safe. Maybe.

Beneath these analytical reasons clacking methodically through Serena's brain, however, lurked a desperate desire to talk to Darien. To speak with him, to see his eyebrows raise and furrow as he spoke, hear his dry voice. Like a current in the water, it subtly steered Serena to the decision to wake Darien and talk to him – very briefly, of course.

She dug her knees into her windowseat and leaned out, hanging onto her window jamb with white knuckles to hiss, "Dar – I mean, Shields!"

His eyes snapped open, gold blazing to life behind his mask, and she wondered nervously if he'd been sitting here feigning sleep this whole time while she internally wrestled. She had not checked the rope, after all…and was not going to, she added stubbornly to herself!

But he stiffened, and she knew that he had not been awake. Darien was not an actor, after all – not to her, at least. Or had not been, before…

She shook the thoughts away and made her voice rude. "What are you doing in my tree?"  
"Your tree?" he sent back.

She opened her mouth to snap "Yes, my tree!" back, then realized what he meant. He was the prince of Earth; of course all the trees here belonged to him. Did he have to bring that up? Unease roiled within her, because Darien being the prince always came back to the princess…and why Serena shouldn't be here, talking to him.

"Serena?"  
She realized she had been silent, chewing her lip. Unbidden, the memory of him telling her he hated it when she was silent floated to the surface of her mind.

"I'm here," she said reluctantly. "Why are you here? I'm…" She hesitated, then added anyway, "I'm avoiding you, you know."

He snorted, a hand digging into his hair. There was a sad edge to the gesture though, a trembling in his fingertips. "Oh, I know." He paused. "I agree with you. It's best you stay away from me."

Serena nearly toppled out of her window. She caught herself just in time, nearly ripping a nail out as she clawed at her window jamb, and felt red flush her cheeks for allowing herself to be so affected by his words. Well – of course he didn't want her near him now that they knew she was a danger to the princess he was meant to be with, she thought. It was logical. It made sense. She was the one who'd initiated it; of course she agreed, had she expected _him_ not to? Of course she hadn't…she ignored the voice in the back of her head that said she _had._

She said, in a very factual-sounding voice, "Well, good. I'm glad. I thought we'd have to fight about it, eventually."

Darien's voice when he spoke sounded a little angry, curling at the edges like a piece of paper on fire. "I'm not that big a jerk, Serena. I wouldn't endanger…" He trailed off, not finishing, but he didn't have to. Serena knew the rest. _I wouldn't endanger my princess._

"Good," said Serena again, again in that business tone. "So why are you here?" A sudden thought occurred to her. "A youma?" But no, of course if there was one he wouldn't have spent all night outside her window; he would have been fighting it and she would have sensed him transform…

But he answered, "Maybe soon," and she snapped her head up to look at him.

He seemed to sense it. "Actually…" He shifted in his perch. "Lita should probably know, too."

The fact that he had come to her first – moreover, spent the night outside her room – warmed her immeasurably. She hastily doused this, however. Somewhere, though, a little candle of hope winked out once his words confirmed that this was business, not him coming to beg her to stop avoiding him…

"Why did you come here?" The words emerged from her mouth without conscious thought.

He shifted again. "I had to check on you. But not here, I'll tell the rest when we see Lita."

"But I'm avoiding you," Serena pointed out again, having to tear the words one by one out of her lungs.

The muscles in his hands, tensed, she saw, the tendons cording, but as his head turned suddenly toward the sky, it was probably just because he'd sensed a bird taking off into flight or something.

"That you are," he said finally, though he did not turn his face back toward her. "However, this is – " He stopped. "Can we call a brief timeout in the avoiding? Just for now. One morning."

L

They went to the arcade. There were a lot of reasons not to go to the arcade, but there was also one, undeniable reason _to _go to the arcade.

"Lita." Serena grabbed her friend's hand the moment she caught sight of her. Lita found herself staring down into two wide blue eyes and her fingers being nearly crushed.

"What the – " She gaped, nearly dropping the tray she held. "_Serena_?"

Then, as she glimpsed the black-haired, golden-eyed senior standing behind Serena, she did drop it. There was a crash, and syrup spilled all over her tennis shoes, seeping between her toes.

"We have to talk to you," Serena whispered to her as they both crouched down to pick all the shattered dishware up.

"Uh," said Lita, whose brain was pretty much overloaded. Serena and Shields were within two feet of each other; Serena and Shields were at the arcade – "Okay. Gimme a sec."

She stood up with the tray and rushed to the counter, throwing a glance over her shoulder and pinching herself as she did so to make sure that no, she was not dreaming, and Serena and Shields were now settling themselves awkwardly into the corner booth.

"Motoki!" She dropped the tray on the counter and grabbed his arm. He handed back someone's change and looked down at her, eyebrows high above his hazel eyes. "Corner booth! Do you see what I see?"

Motoki's eyes snapped away, and she saw his jaw drop. "Darien?"

"And Serena," Lita confirmed, hastily untying her apron.

"But – why – how?"

She balled up her apron and stuffed it into his hand, landing a kiss on his cheek. "Get Numa to cover me for ten minutes," she told him, then barged back out from behind the counter.

She planted herself in the booth next to Serena just as Yuko walked away from having taken their order. She nearly flinched as she felt something cold brush her fingers, then, glancing down surreptitiously, realized it was Serena's hand. She grabbed it, taking in Serena's pale countenance as she did so. Immediately her hackles rose, and she turned to stare suspiciously at Shields.

Who didn't look so great himself. Rather haggard himself. She hadn't seen him in about as long as Serena had, and unlike Serena, whose eyes were clouded by the rose-colored lenses of something very close to adoration, Lita saw the bit of five o'clock shadow darkening Darien's jaw, the bags beneath his eyes, and the fact that his hair hadn't been washed in a little while.

Damn. Her lips compressed. Too concerned with Serena's welfare, she hadn't really given much thought to how Darien might be taking Serena's avoidance of him. But it registered to her, now, looking at the young man whose appearance was usually so impeccable, how big a part of his life Serena had been and how big the subsequent hole was. It merely served to make Lita even more suspicious of the Moon Princess.

But she swept all this away from her mind when Yoko arrived with Serena's soda and Darien's coffee, and said, "What's up?"  
It had always annoyed her, before, when Serena looked to Darien before either of them spoke, as though waiting for his permission, but now, when Serena glanced at Darien, Lita felt a little soothed. Because it was like things had been.

Darien didn't speak, though. So Serena did. Quietly, because even though the arcade was very loud and they were in a corner booth, people were certainly eavesdroppers.

"Shields found out something from Helios."

Lita watched Darien for his reaction to Serena's formal appellation for him. He showed none.

"Did you now, Shields," she said.

Shields wrapped a hand around his coffee abruptly. "What Dark Kingdom general were we on when you came, Kino?"

Somehow, it felt as though he were reminding her that he had been with Serena for far longer than she had, as though he was trying to intimidate her, and Lita felt resentment flare, for she wasn't the one who'd been sending Serena romantic signals when she already had a romantic interest.

"Zoicite," Serena said when Lita didn't answer, effectively ruining both of their designs to enrage one another. "Why does it matter, Darien?"

Lita flicked a glance at Serena. She'd called him "Darien" on purpose? Or not? She couldn't tell from Serena's face, which was focused intently on Darien's.

"Helios hears prophecies," Shields said quickly, taking a sip from his coffee. "When there's wind in Elysion, it carries pieces of prophecy to his ears, and he hears them. He heard, in an apparently very garbled message, that the generals are returning, or have returned."

Lita felt Serena go stiff as stone beside her. She frowned a little. "Is that really such a big deal?" she said. "Zoicite wasn't such hot stuff. Malachite was tough, sure, but – " She shrugged, reluctant to feed Shields' ego. "Nothing your crystal can't take care of."

"Ever heard 'pride cometh before a fall?' " Darien sent a sour look at her. "You never met any of the generals up close, and you never even saw Jadeite."

"He was horrible," whispered Serena suddenly. Her eyes burned. "I hated him."

"I thought Nephrite was worse, myself." Darien had taken another sip of coffee, while Serena had yet to touch her soda.

"How can you say that?" Serena shot daggers at him with her eyes. "He turned good in the end! He protected Molly!"

"Cradlerobber," Darien dismissed.

Serena's face was getting red behind her silver scars. "He _died_ for her! How can you say that?" Then her face cleared a little, fading to pink instead of red. "Oh, I know. You never got over that time he sent out all those letters pretending to be you – "

Not it was Darien's turn for spots of pink to burn high in his face. "Exactly. At least Jadeite did stuff that was on the up and up. Violent, maybe, but not perverted, like Nephrite."

Serena had returned to frowning petulantly again. "You weren't there the time he pretended to be a radio DJ for a girls' love letter show," Lita heard her murmur.

Times like this it really impacted Lita that Darien and Serena had fought the Dark Kingdom together for a full year before she came along. And it kind of stung. It definitely made her feel out of place and lonely.

"The walk down Memory Lane is entertaining and all," she said, "especially for the fifth wheel on the wagon, but back to business. Are you thinking that Beryl'll be back, too?"

At this they both fell silent. At last, Darien shook his head and said, "No clue." He took a gulp of coffee this time, as though to fortify himself. "Helios is trying to find out, though," he added.

"If the generals are back, Ami and Rei are in danger."

Both of them looked at Serena. Darien spoke first.

"Serena, I don't give a damn about Rei and Ami. They made their mess, now they can take care of themselves."

Lita stared at Darien, sensing the ever-increasing tension in Serena beside her. It wasn't only Darien's appearance that had gone sour while Serena was away from him.

Lita became aware of a nudging in her ribs. She blinked, then realized that it was Serena pushing her. She slid out of the booth, Serena sliding out after her.

"Thank you for the information, Shields." Serena's voice was impersonal. "If you find the generals, please call us. We'll call if we need you. Bye, Lita."

She walked out the door then, hair flowing out behind her like a cape.

Lita watched her go, then turned back to look down at Darien.

He had a dumbfounded look on his face that was quickly melting into burning irritation. "That idiot," he hissed under his breath.

"You're the idiot, Shields," Lita said, eyes narrowing. Sure, she felt sorry for him and all, being stuck with that moon princess broad and unable to pursue Serena, but still. But there was a limit to Serena's patience and he'd crossed it. She crossed it herself, sometimes, but she was Lita, not Darien, and Serena expected different things from Lita than she did from Darien and vice versa. She snorted, realizing something. "You're not worth her, anyways."

The pink in Darien's face darkened to red. "I know that," he muttered, not even bothering to shoot a dirty look at her. All of the relief Lita had felt earlier had totally evaporated. She watched Shields get up and walk to the door.

"Dr. Phil-worthy, that was," said a voice in her ear. She didn't bother to turn around but merely sank an elbow into Asanuma's gut. His breath whooshed out, and she caught the tray he nearly dropped. "OW! And I just did you a favor!"

Lita glared at him. "Were you eavesdropping?"

Asanuma put on an offended mien. "Me? Eavesdrop? I would never stoop to that – " At the look on her face, he yielded. "I tried. Couldn't hear, though, a certain group of middle-schoolers was being too loud." He glowered at a rambunctious booth of girls two tables away. "So, what did they say?"

Lita snorted. "You saw them. They walked out on each other again. Darien made Serena mad; he said something about R – Ami," she said hastily, not in the mood to see Asanuma's expression darken and deal with his grumpy alter ego, which always seemed to surface when Rei was mentioned.

They were back at the counter now, and Motoki shot them a hopeful look. Lita shook her head at him, and his shoulders slumped. He turned back to the customer he was ringing up, sighing.

"What did they come in for originally, though?" Asanuma insisted. "And why'd Serena come get you?"

"I don't know." Lita retied her apron. "Maybe Darien wanted to talk to her, I guess? And Serena was nervous, so she came and got me."

"Why would Serena be nervous about talking to Darien?" There was a slightly frightened, semi-nauseous look on Asanuma's face, as though he thought Darien had been beating Serena and that was why Serena hadn't wanted to face him.

"He's not _abusive_, if that's what you're thinking," said Lita quickly, but she wasn't sure how else to convince Asanuma. She couldn't tell the_ truth_…not all of it, anyway.

"Then _why_?" Asanuma stared at her with genuinely pitiful eyes.

Lita sighed and rubbed the back of her neck, a mannerism she'd picked up from Motoki. "You know how Serena is about stuff," she said lamely. "There's this girl…she thinks Darien's really meant to be with her, the girl really, um, likes Darien, and so…Serena's really determined not to get in the way."

Asanuma's eyes and mouth had been getting wider and wider throughout her explanation. Now he burst out, "_THAT'S why they've been freaking avoiding each other?!_"

"Shhh!" hissed Lita. "It's a little more complicated than that – "

"Who is this girl?" Asanuma demanded. "I'm gonna go find her, I'll _explain_ her moronic lapse in judgement – "

_What have I done?_ Lita wailed internally – a mannerism she'd picked up from Serena. She picked up several plates. "Some of us have tables to wait on – "

"Lita, you hafta tell me who this girl is!"

"Asanuma, _no_." Lita glared at his fingers aroudn her arm until they released her. "This is Shields and Serena's business. Butt out."

"What happened to being friends?" Asanuma demanded as she walked away. His raised voice drew the attention of some arcade-goers. "I thought we were _family_! Lita!" he shouted as she kept walking away. "DON'T WE GET _INTERVENTION RIGHTS_?"

L

A/N: Next chapter is half-written.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: I have something to say – it doesn't have to do with the story, not directly, but anyone who's wanted to write – I was reading a story yesterday which was preceded by a vitriolic author's note condemning "ninety percent" of the stories in a fandom as basically…manure. Well, I read this author's story, and guess what, it sucked. And there isn't a single story in existence that doesn't suck, from some point of view, whether it's spelling or plot or characterization or dialogue or something else. I write stuff that sucks; I write stuff that sucks _every day_. But so what? If you're writing, you're writing. That's more than "ninety percent" of the population's doing. How are you supposed to make your writing not suck without writing more?

Sorry for taking so long to update! Enjoy and don't forget to review!

So basically, I guess what I'm saying with this author's note is that if you want to write, write. If you feel like it sucks, do what you can to make it better. If people leave you bad reviews, take it like a piece of driftwood. It gets slammed into the gritty sand by the ocean everyday, but hell if it isn't one of the prettiest things in existence after a couple thousand beatings. If you crawl out of the surf (i.e., stop writing) you'll just end up tangled up in a bunch of slimy seaweed or chucked in a trash can. Keep writing. And don't knock other people's manure. Okay? Give them constructive criticism, don't say anything at all, but don't you dare tell them their stuff sucks, 'cause so does yours. Everyone's does – to quote Ben Kenobi – from a certain point of view. And – did I mention? – keep writing.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon. Which sucks. That doesn't mean I'm gonna stop writing it. (Sorry, I guess that person made me really really mad.)

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Three: Schedule Change

L

A few days later:

A growing anxiety was unfurling in his stomach, like a rubber tree leaf slowly twisting into bloom, as Darien made his way down the sidewalk from the arcade and toward the school. It was a walk that he had taken countless times, but now it was in reverse…much like his life.

No, that was too melodramatic. Blindness had made him too melodramatic.

No, being without Serena had made him too melodramatic. He hadn't been this mopey when he was blind before. He'd had more sleep, then, though…whereas now he spent nearly every waking hour perched on a rooftop somewhere waiting/watching for the Shittenou.

Aura swelled in front of him. He sidestepped, avoiding the pedestrian – catching, as the pedestrian strode past him, the voice barking into the cell phone, too involved with stocks to notice the adolescent walking with a cane in his path. Irritation touched Darien, but it was a tired, absent touch, dulled by frequency and too much familiarity.

He resumed walking again. Compared to his first month of walking with the cane in his neighborhood, there were far fewer whispers and pauses. The people who frequented this district had grown accustomed to his presence and blindness. This did not mean that they were comfortable with it. He sensed, with the perception that grew stronger every day under Helio's Golden Crystal tutelage, their feet on the sidewalk as they cut far around him, weaving around, crossing to the other side of the street so that they could avoid walking too close. It was more noticeable to him now, in these past couple of weeks without Serena chattering at him and distracting him from it.

He had no room for this concern now, however, even should he have allowed himself to worry about it. Right now, far more pressing concerns weighed on his mind. Pressing concerns that he had pushed away all summer, hoping that somehow in the glaring heat of the sun they might fade or evaporate, that somehow with his increased use of the Golden Crystal he might regain his sight…but here it was a handful of days left before his senior year began, and nothing had changed since the summer began.

That wasn't true. Everything, it seemed, had changed. All the things he had never wanted to change had changed, and things he had not known existed had reared their heads into reality, and one of the few things he had actually yearned to be altered had remained unshakably, undeniably, the same: he was still blind.

He sensed a presence just inside the school gate, flat shoes pressing the grass. Stopping a few meters before he reached it, he paused, placing a hand against the brick wall beside him, and regathered himself.

Knowing that Serena wouldn't be there – especially after their 'argument' – but hoping against hope that she would be, he had gone to the arcade that morning. Foolish of him, but there it was. He was a fool, and a desperate, weak one at that.

She hadn't been there, of course. She was far stronger than him. Always had been. He'd never been to her what she was to him – foolish, again, of him to think that he could be, or ever had been. If Serena's life was an Elysion, splling over with a rainbow of flowers and serene, shady trees, and a cleat, shimmering lake, all drenched in sunshine, then he was merely a cloud in that bright blue sky, scudding for an instant above the valley before blowing away to somewhere else. A cloud that brought thunder, lightning, rain, and gloom to that idyllic place, and nothing more.

Within the brick wall was soil from earth; below the cement sidewalk was layers and layers of the planet, secure and unmoveable beneath him. He cast about with his mind for that anchor and inhaled. Then he straightened, moving his hand from the brick wall and striding forward.

"Darien Shields." The presence flared with awareness; he felt the breath of air as the person waiting closed a book and stood. It was a female's voice. Familiar. On the edges of his mind… "_Comment allez-vous_?"

Ah. Realization trickled through Darien hot as magma. "Miss Lanai," he said flatly.

"_Oui_," came the gleeful reply. "'ow is your summer? Too short, _je crois_?"

Darien ignored her question. His knuckles were tight around his cane. "I'm here to see Principal Waishatsu."

"_Oui, je sais_." He sensed her step toward him. "'e sent me to 'elp you find your way. You cannot see, _non_?"

"I don't need help." Darien stepped away from her and set off for the main office himself. "You can go."

"I will come also, to show Monsieur W. zat I 'ave done as 'e asked – even if ze 'elp was refused." She kept up with him quite easily, though he was walking as fast as he could. This was not as fast as he would have liked; it was his first time back on campus since he'd lost his sight, and the bizarre sense of wrongness was nearly overwhelming.

"You walk _beaucoup_ to Marin, _non_? I 'ave called 'er, to model for some more paintings, and 'er mama says always she is not 'ome. You monopolize _la princesse, non_?"

Darien's jaw set. He did not trust Miss Lanai, not as far as he could throw a Kleenex. He especially did nto trust her with Serena. Talking or not, being avoided or not, engaged to the princess or not, Darien was still rabidly protective of the Odango-haired blone. Admittign to Lanai that he had not had a (friendly) conversation with Serena in weeks was paramount, to him, to pinning a bull's eye on Serena's forehead and handing Miss Lanai a gun.

"We don't want any more paintings," he said shortly.

Beside him, she let out a sigh. "_Dommage, dommage_. But it would be 'ard to find ze right color paint for ze scars, I suppose…"

Darien's jaw ground tighter. He thought he heard a crack from inside his mouth. He would need to use the Golden Crystal on his teeth.

Silence dwelt between them for a few steps; Datien heard the whine of an air conditioner to the right and knew they were approaching the main office building.

"_Mais_, I 'ave been thinking of beginning photography," said Lanai suddenly. "I caught a shot _magnifique_ of ze comet a month ago…zere was a brilliant gold around it…_chouette, chouette_!" She clapped her hands as Darien's insides turned progressively colder. "You saw ze comet, _non_, 'ot Boy? Very close up?"

They had entered the air conditioned building, and Darien was trailing a hand alogn the wall beside him to find the doorknob to the principal's office. First one…second one… His insides were ice by now, but he could not think clearly right now, and he had been so paranoid lately; he must wait until later to analyze what she was saying, not lash out and demand whatshe meant right here and now –

"'ot Boy?"

Third one. Darien seized the doorknob.

"Ah, _nous sommes ici_." Lanai seemed disappointed. "I will see you soon – for ze first day. Until zen, 'ot Boy. Tell Marin _bonjour_ for me – "

Darien ducked into the principal's office without waiting for her to finish. That woman…the cogs in his fevered brain were whirling. It was as though she had been hinting to him, no, not hinting, rubbing into his face, practically; _"ze comet, ze comet."_

"Mr. Shields?"  
Darien spun. Then forced himself to relax. God, what a nutcase he must look to the principal; how would he convince him to let him stay now…

"There you are, my boy!" Darien felt himself being given a hug by the slightly shorter man and forced himself not to flinch. He ironed his face into a cordial expression as he was released.

"Take a seat, a seat…" Hands damp with sweat guided him by the shoulder to a cushioned chair and pushed him down. Irritation, again, swiped at him, but with more feeling this time; the adrenaline from Miss Lanai had sharpened everything.

He heard the principal moving aroudn the desk, sinking into his own chair. "So. Ah…Darien."

"Principal Waishatsu," Darien returned shortly. "Have you had a pleasant break?"

"Hmm? Ah – oh, yes. Very nice. And – and you?"

"Very nice," Darien said automatically.

"Was it now? Hmm. I mean – that is to say – " The disbelief and then embarrassment in the principal's voice was nearly tangible. "Well – let's just, ah, cut to the chase, shall we, Darien? You have, ah…lost your sight…" He paused, and Darien felt the pressure of a frantic glance upon him. He said nothing. "And, frankly put, I am not quite sure how we are going to deal with that this year…"

Darien's insides knotted into a pretzel. Here it was, he was kicking him out… Along with the apprehension came a spurt of fury that he forced himself to swallow.

"I would, of course – all the teachers would, that is – love to see you finish out your school career here – but the fact simply is that, well, ah…" There was a pause, as though he was shrugging helplessly. "We are not equipped to properly handle such a, ah, handicap. Especially when such a brilliant student's education is at stake."

Darien leaned forward, setting the cane across his knees. "Principal Waishatsu, I've…done some thinking about this." Some was an understatement. Try every damn night. "Last year, when Dr. Ludisae offered me the place at his school, you both pointed out that I have enough credits to graduate."

He felt Waishatsu's bristling; he'd never quite forgiven Darien for not going to the American university.

"So, really, what I do this year doesn't really matter."

At this, Waishatsu bristled even more. "On the contrary, Mr. Shields! The grades you earn this year will be the first thing college admissions officers see – "

"And they'll be wonderful, A-level grades," cut in Darien, more sharpness emerging in his voice than he had intended. "But why not let me take a year of mostly elective classes along with the classes for which I've found Braille material is readily available?"

He shifted in his seat, pulling a sheaf of folded paper from his back pocket. He placed it on the sturdy wood he sensed before him, smoothing the paper out on the desk. "Math courses, for example, would be more difficult for me to do because of needing to see while I write out calculations, but language courses, for example, which I've always been proficient at, value speaking ability more highly than writing. And even with the writing bits, I can type it using a keyboard I ordered – " Darien counted the pages in his head, finding the one that had the keyboard's picture and information on it. "I can use headphones that go back and read what I've typed so I catch any glaring errors. In addition, these language books come in Braille at the textbook website I found on the internet. (Elysion, he had discovered one very late night, had wi-fi, bizarrely enough.) I'm at a fourth year level French at least, as well as English, and there's Spanish, Chinese, and German – "

He withdrew the last two pages from the sheaf, speaking quickly and without break so that Waishatsu could nto get a word in. "Also, science and literature classes. Notes are basically given orally anyways in Biology; it's just that I may have a hard time participating in the labs, but that could be worked around. And in literature, I can find all the books we'll be reading on audiotape AND Braille, then type papers with the keyboard. Then – then, in tests," he hurried on, "I might have to take them separately, orally, so the questions can be read out loud to me, but I'd come in before school, at lunch, after school, whenever it's convenient for the teachers."

He had raced through all his information too quickly, he was sure. Waishatsu had certainly not had time to absorb more than a few bits of it – he gritted his teeth and leaned forward, utilizing his most persuasive, 'mature teenager' expression.

"Principal Waishatsu," he said slowly and carefully, imbuing each word with weight. "I believe that I can do this. I also believe that at this juncture in my life, it is critical that some things around me remain stable so that I can adjust to this new aspect of my life. High school is one of those things. I am asking you to _seriously_ consider my request."

L

There was, of course, no way for anyone to resist this sort of argument. Darien's grown-up attitude, convincing research, careful plans, compelling golden eyes, and especially his throbbing voice would have swayed even Lita. Principal Waishatsu, a mere mortal already possessing a weakness for straight-A students, had no chance at all.

Darien took his school clothes to the dry cleaner's that very afternoon.

L

Serena's stomach was usually a ball of dread on the first day of school. Some kids looked forward to going back to school to see their friends again, but Serena had always stayed in close touch with friends over the summer, so that incentive wasn't there for her. In fact, this year the prospect of seeing everyone again was the opposite of an incentive. Every shop window she walked past on the way to school reminded her of the scars that hadn't been on her face the last time she'd walked off campus.

Today, though, Serena's stomach was not so much as ball as a writhing…something. What was that Pokemon from Sammy's video game, the one that had looked like a clump of moving purple spaghetti? That was what her stomach felt like today.

At the street corner across from the school entrance gate she stopped. The Pokemon that was her stomach began to bounce like a Mexican jumping bean.

Serena tugged at her long bangs, hiding her cheeks. She should have said yes when Lita asked if she wanted to walk to school together. Or at the very least she could have called Molly and asked her to walk with her – no, she should have followed her instincts and faked suck so she could miss the first day altogether –

_Stop it._ She stomped a foot at herself. _You're being an idiot!_ Yes, people were going to stare at her scars. Half the school had already seen her at the birthday party Asanuma had thrown for her, anyway – but she'd been too preoccupied with Fiore then to really notice anyone's reactions, her mind pointed out. But no, that was beside the point, the point was that other people had seen her, and it wasn't as though anyone was going to walk up to her and tell her how hideous she looked all cut up like a fillet. No, all she'd have to deal with would be people avoiding looking at her and fake cheer…and that wasn't hard, was it? Certainly it was easier than avoiding Darien.

Except…her feet, which had begun to move determinedly forward, stopped again. Darien. Avoiding him by avoiding the arcade was one thing. What did she do at lunch, when Motoki sat with Lita, and Darien sat with Motoki…?

"Hey!"

She could go eat lunch in the library, but that would be so obvious. Not that it wasn't obvious already that she was avoiding Darien, but…

"Nee-chan!"

Especially since she'd told him to his face that she was avoiding him, and he'd agreed with her. Okay, so being obvious was a moot point – but maybe she could get in trouble on purpose so she could get a lunch detention and –

"ONEE-CHAN!"

Serena nearly fell over as the voice blasted into her ears. As it was, her bag clattered to the ground, and she leapt a mile in the air. Her eyes, wide as dinner plates, flicked around and landed on the midget in front of her.

"BUJI?" she gasped.

The brown-haired glared up at her, his arms crossed. "You're blocking traffic, nee-chan! The walk light's come on three times since you've been standing here!"

Serena looked around bemusedly and saw a little flock of pedestrians just reaching the other side of the street. She saw one of them, a woman in a business suit, flick a glance over her shoulder back at Serena, eyebrows lifted. Serena flushed.

"What's up?" Buji wanted to know. He wore his red and white school uniform, complete with a sailor hat, which was tipping slowly backward on his dark curls as he craned his neck back to look up at Serena.

Serena reached out and perched the hat more securely on his head, earning a scowl from Buji.

"These hats are so dumb," he said. "It's like walking around with a giant marshmallow on my head."

Serena smiled, her racing thoughts calming a little as she looked down at Buji. He had that effect on her. "I was always jealous of the kids with hats in elementary school. My school didn't have them."

"Hmph," was Buji's only reply. He looked across the street, then back at her. "You don't want to go to school, huh, Serena-onee-chan?"

Serena grimaced, her eyes slipping back to the happy teens greeting each other at the front gate. "No…" A thought hit her suddenly, and she looked down at him. "Wait a second, Buji, what are you doing here this early in the morning? Grade school doesn't start for another hour!"

Pink tinged Buji's cheeks suddenly, and he wouldn't meet her eyes. He mumbled something.

"Huh?"

"YouseemedsadaboutschoolsoIcametocheeryouup," Buji mumbled again, all in one breath. His cheeks were red now, not pink. Serena's heart melted. All the love and gratefulness it melted into poured into her thoughts and diluted all her worried anxiety about the upcoming day.

"Buji," she breathed, tears pricking her eyes. She fell to her knees and crushed him in a hug. "Thank you thank you _thank you_."

He didn't squirm but instead wrapped his little arms around her neck. "You're the prettiest lady in the world after my mom, Onee-chan," he said fiercely into her collar. "And if anyone thinks you're not, then I'll beat them up!"

Serena let out a shaky little laugh and pulled back, propping her forehead against Buji's. His cheeks weren't read anymore; his brown eyes blazed back at hers with fierceness she hadn't seen since before Darien went blind. "Thank you, Honey Bunny."

Buji pulled back gruffly and pushed her to her feet. "Now go to school!" he ordered, glaring and pointing at the crosswalk. "If I got up early for you, then you better not be late!"

"Hai, Buji-dono!" Serena threw him a salute and marched across the crosswalk. (Luckily, the walk sign was lit.)

L

The warmth from Buji's encouragement lasted Serena a little bit into homeroom, carrying her like an enchanted gondola through the halls of whispering, surreptitiously staring students. There were no seats near Lita when she entered the classroom, since she was rather late, but Lita got up and moved to the desk that was open in front of the seat Serena took. But the bell rang then, and there was only time for Lita to throw her a smile and for Serena to throw one back before Ms. Haruna began talking and passing out schedules.

Actually, the precise instant the warmth disappeared was the moment Serena looked down at the schedule Ms. Haruna handed her and saw her seventh period elective. At that moment, Serena's stomach evolved into an even bigger writhe-y Pokemon.

Lita twisted around in her seat. "When do you have Physical Education," she began, then apparently noticed something in Serena's expression. "Hey, you okay?"

"Ahem, our two chatterboxes in back!" Ms. Haruna's voice rang out. "I'm talking about lunch arrangements this year, so I'd think you, especially, Miss Serena, would want to listen."

Last year, this would have elicited a ripple of laughter throughout the room as well as an unabashed grin from Serena herself. This year, however, there were only a few sickly, uncertain smiles from the other students. Serena, though, made herself laugh gaily, both to convince a worried-looking Lita that nothing was wrong and to keep her classmates from treating her any differently than they had last year.

"Sorry, Ms. Haruna," she said brightly.

Lita echoed her apology, albeit with less enthusaiasm, shooting Serena a suspicious "Are you really okay?" look. Serena pointed a finger down at her schedule and mouthed "Etoukou again."

Lita's frown melted into an amused smirk. She turned back around in her seat, and Serena breathed a silent sigh of relief.

Ms. Haruna was droning on again, about lockers now. Serena slid her eyes back down to the schedule laying flat on her desk.

Period 1 / Literature / Genji

Period 2 / Chemistry / Kuro

Period 3 / Algebra II / Haruna

Period 4 / Physical Education / Etoukou

Period 5 / Study Hall / Kamiya

Period 6 / English / Smith

Period 7 / Art / Lanai

Dredging up the contents of the deepest recesses of her memory, Serena tried to recall what elective she had signed up for when the guidance counselor passed out the sign-up sheets last year. She had been half-asleep that day, due to a youma and a nightmare, but she was sure – absolutely sure – that she hadn't signed up for Art. In the first place, she'd never drawn anything more than stick figures – except the chibi drawings of Luna she had once doodled – and in the second place, she had already met Miss Lanai by sign-up time and definitely hadn't wanted to study under her tutelage, despite Asanuma's extolling of her virtues.

Home Ec. That was what she'd signed up for, so she could learn to cook, as well as be in class with Lita. And as her second choice…French. She'd put French as her second choice because it sounded so cool when Darien spoke it, on those rare occasions – Serena quickly shoved away this thought, focusing on that last line onher schedule. She had definitely not signed up for Art, not even as her fifth and last choice, yet here it was in black and white on her schedule.

When the bell rang for first period, Lita snagged the back corner desks for them in Genji's Literature class, and she laid out her schedule on Serena's desk, smoothing it flat. "Compare."

Serena hesitated, then pulled out her schedule. Lita might flip – okay, definitely would – but she'd rather Lita flipped and knew where she was than that she kept her seventh period teacher secret from Lita and then disappeared without anyone knowing her whereabouts. Not that Lanai was really going to do anything, of course…

Serena became suddenly aware of a very penetrating silence. She jerked free of her jumbling thoughts and met Lita's eyes.

Lita stared at her, curiosity sharpening her features. "Serena, did you sign up for Art?"  
Serena shook her head.

"So why – " Lita kept her eyes on Serena, clearly expecting her to explain, or something. "Isn't Lanai – " She lowered her voice to a whisper, flicking her glance aroudn to the entering stream of students. "Isn't she the one who painted that picture of you and…you know?"

Serena inhaled. "Yes." Then she remembered that Lita had only ever seen the picture of herself and Darien in a compromising position, not the one where she was stabbed.

Lita stared at her, cearly expecting more. When Serena didn't say anything more, she asked, "So why'd they put you in Art if you didn't sign up?"

"It must have been a mistake." Serena kept her air carefully nonchalant, doodling in her notebook. "I'll go get it changed at lunch." Here at least was a reason to not sit with them at lunch.

"Hmm." Lita frowned at the schedule, not in a thunderous way, just a curious way.

Serena felt anxious; Lita was almost invariably on her side, but what if she told Darien, and he flipped out and did something? "Lita, don't tell Darien, okay? He really doesn't like her."

"Like she had anything to do with it." Lita snorted, relaying her opinion of Darien. "What makes you think he'll care, anyway? You guys are avoiding each other."

Lita's words were like a punch to the gut. Serena felt she covered her reaction well, though. "I know that. Still, why bother taking chances? You won't tell him, right, Lita? Please."

Lita grunted. "Like I've talked to him in the past month either, I'm not about to start now."

That was all well and good to say, but Lita's boyfriend was Darien's best friend. She was going to end up coming into contact with him at lunch…unless…

"You and me for lunch, right?" Lita said, pulling a straw out of her pocket and sticking it between her teeth. "We'll find a new tree."

Serena's depressing train of thought screeched to an abrupt halt. Staring at Lita, she stuttered, "R-really?"

Lita flicked her a glance from beneath her bangs as the tardy bell rang. It was one of Lita's patented "Are you crazy?" looks.

"Duh, of course," she said around the straw. "But you're going to the guidance counselor's office, right? So I'll camp out in the cafeteria, and come get me there if you get finished before fifth. Cool?"

"Cool." Serena flashed a sudden smile, genuine as her hair color. "I love you, Lita."

"Back atcha, kiddo."

"Hey!" Serena threw her pencil at Lita, who tugged a ponytail in revenge. Then they realized the whole class was quiet and watching them, along with Miss Genji, and they sweatdropped.

L

Chemistry and Alegbra II were pure torture, as Serena had expected them to be. Already she had four pages of homework between the two of them. She tried to console herself with the thought that even if junior year was shaping up to be twice as difficult as last year, at least there weren't any youma to deal with this year, which evened it out. She knew, though, that this consolation would seem pretty flimsy when she was actually working on the systems of equations at her desk that night. Plus there was the little matter of not being friends with Darien anyore weighing down one side of the scales/equation.

The walk to the physical education locker rooms after Algebra took her past the parking lot. No sign remained to alert passersby of the youma attack that had taken place there three months ago; no tire skid marks on the cement, or craters in the pavement, or indelible bloodstains, or even yellow police tape. Serena couldn't even pick out the parking slot Darien's car had been parked in on prom night from the rest of the car-filled spaces. It seemed as though that night must have been a dream; surely it couldn't have happened; surely Darien wasn't a reincarnated prince; surely there weren't scars on her face…

"Serena-chan!"

She turned, gripping her bag. "Asanuma!"

The blonde senior slowed his jog into a walk as he reached her side, grinning down at her. "Long time no see, Serena-chan!"

"Did you grow?" Serena asked, tilting her head to look up at him and neatly evading the question implied in his words.

"Four centimeters!" Asanuma laughed as they drew nearer to the locker rooms. "I tell you, those black market growth hormones work wonders…"

Serena eyed him suspiciously. "You're joking, right?"

Asanuma eyed her back, his expression suddenly serious. Ridiculously so. "No, of course not." He leaned closer suddenly, glancing around. "You want me to get ahold of some for you? They're really cheap, only ten – "

"ITTO!"

They both jumped up straight and spun around.

Coach Etokou stalked toward them, clipboard in hand and a fresh and very voluptuous black mustache bristling on his upper lip. "What's this dawdling?" he demanded. He shook his whistle at Asanuma. "Don't think just because Shields isn't in this period this year you can go moving in on Tsukino, Itto. Into the locker room!"

Shooting a glance at Serena's face, Asanuma broke into a lope, disappearing into the boys' locker room.

"I'VE GOT MY EYE ON YOU!" Coach yelled after him. Then he turned back to Serena.

"So, Tsukino." He cleared his throat. "How ya doing? Okay?"

Serena looked him in the eye."Coach, Shields and I aren't dating."

"Oh, it's Shields now, is it – wait! WHAT?"

"We're NOT dating," said Serena clearly. "And we never were. So please stop saying things like that, okay?"

Coach was sputtering. "But – Tsukino – you two were – are – "

"Not dating," Serena finished for him shortly. She hitched up her bag and entered the girls' locker room.

L

"This is the most boring PE ever."

"Whose bright idea was it to put Shields and Tsukino in different PE classes? I've been in their class for two years! They've always had PE together."

"Well, it's cause he's blind, isn't it? He probably isn't taking PE anymore. Is he even still going to this school?"  
"Yeah, I had Lit with him this morning. Supposedly he's worked out all these special arrangements with Waishatsu to stay here and finish out his senior year – dunno why he's staying. I'd be out of here if I was him."

"Well, he's dating Tsukino, isn't he? Who wants to go out and get a job when you can go to school with her everyday?"

"Nah, dude, I heard they broke up."

"_I_ heard you're going to get a bloody nose if you don't stop gossiping like two old grandmas." Asanuma threw his two cents' worth into the conversation, glaring at the gaggle of junior guys in the bleachers. He also threw in a basketball, which sent them scattering with a blizzard of profanities.

"Sheesh. Like a bunch of magpies over there!" Asanuma turned back to Serena, who held the softball Coach had ordered everyone to toss back and forth with a partner. "Okay, aim for my face this time, Serena."

Serena, whose face had gone pink at all the muttered chatter from her classmates on the bleachers, forced herself to pay attention. Then she realized what Asanuma had said. "What? Your _face_?"  
"Well, you've been aiming for my hands and hitting my kneecaps, so I figured you aim higher than my hands and the ball should come at my hands." Asanuma shrugged, flashing her a grin. "No offense."

"Humph," grumbled Serena, winding up and hurling the ball at Asanuma's face.

"Whoah!" Asanuma dove. The ball sailed through his curly hair. "I guess my math was a little wrong. That one almost hit my crotch – hey! Was that on purpose?"

"Asanuma!"

He waved off her flushed outburst, grinning again. "Just joking!" then running after the baseball. It had bounced into the vincinty of the cheerleaders' ball tossing.

"Tsukino." Coach Etoukou appeared at her elbow, handkerchief clutched to his nose. "You're sure – you and Shields – never _ever_?"

"NO, COACH ETOUKOU!" Serena stomped a foot and bellowed at him.

Coach let out a wail and ran to the ball closet, slamming the door behind him.

"Did you hit him in the crotch, too?" Asanuma had returned with the ball.

"_No_!" Serena felt very hot and bothered. She realized how illogical it was; last year this time she would have been laughing at Asanuma's antics, but right now they were wringing scalding tears into her eyes. Last year this time she'd been wailing how unfair it was that she had to be in PE with Darien Shields AGAIN, and three months ago she'd been thrilled out of her mind to be in class with him, and now she wished he was still in the class but was more glad that he wasn't – everything was messed up. She was messed up. What was wrong with her?

After changing back into her school uniform, she splashed water onto her face and peered at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were too big, and bloodshot; her face was pale, and the scars stood out livid against the pallid skin. Her grown-out bangs poofed out around her face like furry caterpillars. Her appearance was just another screwy item to add to the day's tally.

The bell rang, and she inhaled, trying to fill herself with courage for the guidance counselor. She marched to the main office.

L

The intercom buzzed in the middle of Mr. Takenuechi's explanation of the course syllabus, ten minutes before lunch.

"Excuse me," blared a student aide's voice.

Darien heard the irritated sigh from Mr. Takeneuchi and the rustling of papers as everyone set down their copy of the syllabus. "Yes?"  
"Could you send Darien Shields to the principal's office, please?"

For an instant, Darien searched his mind to think what he and Serena could have doen to get sent to this principal's office this time – then reality interceded, and he recalled that he had not spoken to Serena since that day he camped out outside her window.

"Yes," replied Mr. Takeneuchi with clear annoyance. "He's coming."

Darien got to his feet as the teacher resumed his droning. He had been assigned to the seat closest the door, so he did not stumble over anyone.

The halls were deserted, and when he entered the main office, the quiet murmur that had filled it silenced.

"I was called to Principal Waishatsu's office," he said, not waiting for them to ask. And not waiting for them to tell him to go ahead, he opened the principal's office door.

"Darien!" Principal Waishatsu's chair scraped backward.

Darien sat down quickly before Waishatsu could pull him into a one-armed hug again like last time. "Principal Waishatsu," he said. "You called me?"

"Yes. Yes, I wanted to see how your classes are going. You're doing alright? Do you need help? Is it hard to follow anything?"

"I've only been to four classes," Darien said, trying to keep the irritation from his voice.

"Ah – yes, of course! But _so far_ – "

"Everything has gone very smoothly. The teachers have only been going over the class objectives and rules, but I don't think I'll have any trouble. Thank you for your concern, Principal Waishatsu."

"Anytime, anytime…"

The conversation trickled to a halt. The lunch bell suddenly rang. Darien sat forward, wanting to leave.

"Well – "

He leaned back again. So much for getting out of there quickly.

"I want you to promise me, Darien, that should you face any difficulties, you'll come, ah, talk to me about it. My students' well-being is one of my greatest concerns. If anything becomes too much for you, I don't want you to, ah, suffer through it. You're a special student, and you deserve to be treated as such. Okay?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well – very good. Ah – I won't keep you from lunch, then…run along, my boy. And remember, I'm always here if you need to talk!"

Darien nodded and strode, nearly running, from the room.

L

The line winding out of the guidance counselor's office curled like a snake all the way to the clinic. Serena, only a few spots from the front of the line, was one of the few students who would actually get doen in time to go buy and eat lunch. But the way her stomach was knotting, she really didn't think she'd be able to swallow anything.

A door across from the counselor's opened, and she heard someone greet, "Hey, Shields."

Panickedly – and totally illogically since he couldn't see her – Serena purposefully dropped her schedule and crouched to the floor to pick it up.

It was the worst thing she could have done, she realized in the split second that the familiar red and white tennis shoes entered her vision – she'd dropped her schedule too far to the side – and then the heavy weight bowled into her.

Serena was pinned to the ground beneath a very familiar chest that felt harder than she remembered.

Darien scrambled quick as lightning to his feet; she saw his face burning with an angry flush, then his fingers were caught in her hair, and the red drained from his face. "Ser – Tsukino?"

By now, murmurs rippled through the line of students – but they did not receive the gut-busting argument they had been expecting.

Instead, a "next!" came from the office, and Serena darted from Darien to run inside.

Mrs. Kamiya – Mr. Kamiya's wife – looked up at her wearily, rubbing her temples. "Serena," she said with some surprise. She had gotten to know Serena during the blonde's various trips to the principal with Darien the past two years. "Are you here to thank me? You don't have PE with Mr. Shields this year."

Accustomed though she was growing to the constant mentions of Darien to her, Serena felt her stomach twinge a little nonetheless. She cleared her throat, wondering why Mrs. Kamiya kept glancing over her shoulder. Was someone misbehaving in the line? "Actually, I'm here about my elective," she said, pushing her schedule toward Mrs. Kamiya. "I'm pretty sure I didn't put this down as one of my choices…" She pointed at the bottom of her schedule.

Mrs. Kamiya was nodding, having already brought up Serena's schedule on her computer. She pushed her rhinestone-studded glasses up on her nose. "Yes, I know, Serena. That was a special request from Miss Lanai. She said you showed her some of your artwork over the summer and she was very impressed." She looked at Serena, finger still resting against the frame of her spectacles. "I was under the impression that it was a special arrangement between you two for you to take lessons with her – "

"_What_?"

Serena's spine stiffened to stone. She spun in the chair.

"Mr. Shields," said Mrs. Kamiya. "I allowed you to stay in here because I knoew your relationship with Miss Tsukino, but you cannot – "

"You're in Art with Lanai?" Darien demanded, paying no attention at all to Mrs. Kamiya. His golden eyes burned at Serena.

She couldn't believe he'd followed her in –

"Take her out of that class," Darien ordered Mrs. Kamiya. "Switch her out, right now."

"_Mr. Shields _– "

"No!" Serena had jumped up. "Don't switch me out, Mrs. Kamiya, please. I WANT to take Art!" Her eyes snapped like blue fire.

"Serena – "

"Thank you, Mrs. Kamiya," Serena said over Darien's patronizing snap. She spon on her heel, pushing past him.

He caught up to her in the hallway and seized her by the arm, high and close to her shoulder. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Let go of me!" She whirled out of his grip and strode rapidly, almost running. "It's none of your business."

"Hell it's none of my business! She has a homicidal fixation on you! I don't trust her – "

"You don't trust ANYONE!" Serena whirled again, this time to face him. She stared at him for a long moment, trying to figure him out, as though the sweep of his bangs or the jut of his jaw would reveal it to her. "I'm not the princess, Shields. It's not your job to protect me."

Darien heard her little shoes click away on the tile down the hallway, staccato and sharp. He didn't follow her. He pivoted, too, and headed in the opposite direction.

He strode until the scent of paint grew heavy in the air. A presence lurked within the fumes; he wrenched open the classroom door and stood there for a moment, tryign to figure it out logically, reasonably, strategically –

"Oh? 'ave you decided to take my class too, 'ot Boy?"

Her breath made hot little wafts of air. He was suddenly there and sweeping the cans of paint from the easel tray with a single jerk of his arm. His blood pounded in his ears. He waited until the racket of the cans crashing to the floor has ceased.

"If you hurt her – " He sucked the oxygen from the air around her into his fist and waited until he heard her breath catch. "I'll kill you."

He let her wheeze for a few minutes to let it sink in. Then he released the oxygen and left the classroom.

L

Alarm bells rang in Serena's head as she moved from the thickly-populated section of the elective hallway to the art classroom at the very end. She found herself regretting the way she'd reacted to Darien's butting into her business.

The fact that the door to the classroom was closed did not help her churning stomach; she lifted a hand to the doorknob, then dropped it. She raised a fist to knock, then lowered it back down to her side. She could go back now, could tell Mrs. Kamiya that it was all a mistake –

The door swung open. A pair of hands seized Serena and dragged her forward. "Marin!"

Miss Lanai no longer wore the penciled-on mustache abover her lips, Serena noticed before anything else. Its absence unsettled her, she realized – or maybe her positively pretzel-knotted stomach was due to the fact that the tardy bell had just rung but she and Miss Lanai were the only people in the classroom.

"_So_…" Miss Lanai was pulling Serena's backpack from her arms, pushing her down onto the sofa where Serena had sat on Darien's lap last year. "'ow was your summer, Marin? You 'ad fun? Found somezing you zought you 'ad lost?"

Serena scarcely registered Miss Lanai's words. Her eyes darted around the classroom, trying to find a rongue student that she could have somehow missed seeing – surely Asanuma would pop up from behind one of those easels at any second now, laughing madly.

But no one popped out from behind and easel; empty space stared back at her.

"Miss Lanai…" Her voice sounded weird. "Where is everyone?"

"Everyone?" Miss Lanai had a steaming pot of tea; she poured two cups. "'o do you mean, Marin?"

"The other students – " Serena sounded a little desperate. "Aren't there any other students in this class?"

Miss Lanai set down the teapot and sat, lifting one of the cups to her lips. "Ozzer students?" she said from behind the rim. "You are ze only student in zis class, Marin. Zis is my planning period. I persuaded Madame Kamiya zat your talent was so impressive zat I would give up my planning period to nurture it appropriately."

Again, Serena had barely registed most of what Miss Lanai had said; her brain had caught onto "only student in zis class" and fixated on it, like a leech to a bloody wound.

She stood, trying to hide her suddenly trembling legs, and nearly ran to the door. "I – I'm very sorry, Miss Lanai, but I didn't sign up for this class, and I'm very sure I don't have any artistic talent – " She wouldn't even go into the outright lie Miss Lanai had told Mrs. Kamiya about seeing her artwork; Serena sensed, as clearly as she sensed Darien when she transformed, that something was very wrong, and that she needed to leave. " – and I need to go get a schedule change now – "

Her hand closed around the doorknob.

"I think you will regret very much if you do that." Miss Lanai lowered her teacup. "Sailor Moon."

L


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: I don't think I've ever written such a suspenseful cliffhanger in my life. Except maybe the second to last chapter of STC Season 1, but no one had any clue what was going on there, so I'm not sure it counts.

Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon. If I did…the authorities would take it away from me and put it in foster care because I'm so very abusive to poor Serena and Darien.

Heres chapter4. I don't know how long it'll take to post chapter 5, but I hope Eight won't too long to give it to me, so hang in there guys! Enjoy.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Four: The Senshi Who Wasn't

L

The shaking fingers of Serena's other hand found the doorjamb and gripped it, white-knuckled. "I'm sorry?" she managed, but in a whisper.

Miss Lanai took another drink from her teacup; this one was a draught, draining the cup. Serena watched with a paralyzed sort of fascination. "Sit down, Serena."

Her French accent was gone. A clipped voice had replaced it, just as her sly smile had been replaced by an expression as unsmiling as – as Luna's.

Serena should have been running through in her mind all the instances she had been around Miss Lanai that she might have slipped up and revealed herself, but all she could think of was Darien's voice as he ordered Mrs. Kamiya to take her out of this class, and how he was right – _and always was_, she thought, wretched desperation sinking claws into her heart –

"Don't wear that expression." A sigh gusted into her thoughts. "I'm not going to hurt you or reveal your secret. I'm like you, Serena."

"Like me?" said Serena in a hoarse voice. A princess traitor? Was that what she meant, what she referred to?

"Yes." Miss Lanai sat forward. "_I _am Sailor Pluto."

L

Serena, staring at the woman, blurted out what popped immediately into her mind. "You're not."

"Miss Lanai stared at her. Her forehead wrinkled above her spectacles, and her lips curved into a frown.

"You're not like me," Serena clarified quickly. There didn't seem to be any point in denying that she was Sailor Moon to a woman who had told her a story about a moon princess and now claimed to be Sailor Pluto, though she could hear Darien's voice shouting at her in the back of her mind. "I'm…something else," she finished helplessly.

"Oh?" Miss Lanai poured herself another cup of tea. "And what might that be, pray tell?"

"…a High Senshi…?" said Serena, though it was more of a question than an answer.

"I see." Miss Lanai lowered the teapot, and now there was a smile on her face. "And how did you learn this?"

"How did you learn I was Sailor Moon?" Serena countered. She still stood by the door, but had taken a step away from it. Blood roared fast and loud in her ears.

"For a Senshi like myself, the glamour was not difficult to see through." Miss Lanai smiled at her, a very different smile from the usual sly grin she shot at Serena; this one was more feline. "You are the only true blonde in the surrounding districts. Save for the short period that Sailor Venus was present."

A doubt, hard and cold like a stone, was precipitating in her stomach. "If you've known…" she said slowly. "And you're a Senshi – why didn't you come help us?"

It was a demand. Miss Lanai was no longer smiling. She set down her teacup. "The Senshi are cracked," she said, "Luna twisted and murderous. Sailor Venus was a traitor – not even, a corpse. Sailors Mars and Mercury were useless. And all of them believed you were a traitor. And now…" Her brown eyes watched Serena closely, their weight pressing down on Serena like a hot, heavy blanket. "I find that you believe that yourself."

At this, Serena, at last, sank into the chair. Perhaps it was because this was the first, the first ever confident, ringing-with-truth assertion that she was_ not _a traitor.

Yet – yet – surely it was too good to be true.

"But I – " Her hands pressed flat against the tabletop. "Mina didn't remember me. Beryl didn't. Kisenian had no clue who I was – "

Lanai placed her teacup on the table again. "I will tell you the reason for all of these things and more, Serena. But you must commit to training with me and resuming your Senshi responsibility to grow as strong as you can become."

This was, Serena sensed, a far huger and longer-reaching choice than mere words made it seem. She felt as it she was balanced on the edge of a precipice, looking down at an overwhelming fall that separated her from the other side of the canyon.

But – to find out who she was. That she really wasn't evil, or bad…

In her mind, she saw Darien, in his mask and tuxedo and cape. He perched atop a roof, and beside him stood Lita, her hair and fuku shirt snapping in the strong wind. And all around them, other Senshi, Mars and Mercury and faceless Senshi, and a faceless woman in a flowing dress with flowing hair. But they were high, high up on that rooftop and she, Serena, was on the ground, staring up at them as they did not even notice her...or as they glared down at her, attacks burning in their hands as they aimed down at her…even Darien, even Lita…

"I'm not a High Senshi?" Serena whispered.

Miss Lanai's glowing gaze bore through the image pasted over her mind's eye. "You are not – " She stopped suddenly. Serena stared at her, teeth grinding down on her lip. "Do you agree to my terms?"

Serena closed her eyes. The image was burned into her eyelids. "Yes."

Miss Lanai rose and crossed to the door. Then – Serena watched with a twist of apprehension – she turned the door handle and locked it.

"Wouldn't do for anyone to hear us, now, would it?" Miss Lanai seemed to have noticed Serena's discomfiture. She spread her palms wide and gazed at her. "This was not supposed to happen. I am very sad to see that it has. I will not hurt you, Serena. You see, unlike the other Senshi and Luna, I know who you really are."

Serena suddenly had a fleeting, breath-punching thought. She was the Moon Princess. Her mind lunged into overdrive, rapidly constructing images of her with Darien –

"You, Serena, were the princess's shadow bodyguard."

The images shattered. Serena clasped her hands tightly in her lap.

"Bodyguard," she repeated quietly.

"Yes." Miss Lanai was watching her closely, almost as though she knew what Serena had been thinking. "You have not heard that the princess had a bodyguard, I think?"

"The Senshi were her bodyguards, I thought," Serena said.

Miss Lanai smiled, adjusting her spectacles. "Yes. To an extent."

'To an extent' seemed like an understatement to Serena. The Senshi had basically sold their souls to protect the princess, or so she had been told.

"There was," Miss Lanai continued, "a secret, last line of defense between the princess and any threat. That line existed to protect the princess from any threat that might somehow worm its way through the Senshi. That last line of defense was you. Sailor Moon.

"Luna did not know who you were, nor did Sailor Venus, nor Kisenian Blossom, because you were the most highly guarded secret. You were believed to be the princess's handmaiden, only a servant. The only ones aware of the truth of your existence and of your abilities were the princess, the queen – and myself."

Serena was silent for a moment, letting her mind submerge the Titanic of information that had just been slammed into her. It made sense, so much sense…she felt an incredible lightening, as though she had been crushed beneath a mountain and had just fought free of it and emerged into open air and sunlight.

"But it didn't work," she realized aloud. "The princess died." She looked at Miss Lanai. "I…failed?"

Miss Lanai stood abruptly. The force of her movement away from the table sloshed a bit of tea out of her cup and onto the table. It spread across the napkin like a brown bloodstain.

It was like a trickle of gravel streaming down the side of a mountain, warning of a rockslide to come. Stomach tightening, Serena watched Miss Lanai pace to the other side of the room.

"You may have noticed – " Miss Lanai stopped. She turned back to face Serena. "You may have noticed that you harbor a certain…_affection_ for Darien Shields."

The heat fled from Serena's veins and rushed to her face, reddening her cheeks.

Miss Lanai followed the flush with her eyes.

"Yes," she said quietly. "I thought so."

She paused, then returned to the table, sitting down across from Serena again. Her eyes bored into Serena's, which skittered away.

"It is no fault of yours." Serena stared fixedly at a half-finished sketch on a canvas as Miss Lanai spoke softly to her. "You are to be commended, rather, from resisting that emotion now that you know what he and the princess are…"

Serena did not think to wonder how Miss Lanai knew what Darien and the princess were; she felt too ashamed and vile. She forced her eyes back to her hands, clenched in her lap.

"You were not present when the Dark Kingdom forces arrived to kill the princess." Lanai's voice took on the clinical, rolling cadence of explanation again. "It was a very quick and unexpected attack, and you were not there. You had left."

Serena spoke through numb lips. "Why?"

There was a pause.

"You were the princess's constant companion. As such, you were present during her meetings with the prince Endymion – save when she managed to escape you. Often, I have found, you relayed messages from the princess to the prince." Another pause, (this one shorter.) "You fell in love with him yourself. And just as Darien Shields is not, Endymion was not averse to your attentions…there is an aura about you, Serena Tsukino, that draws beings in. Witchlike it may be called – has been called, by many." She shook her head, braid tossing over her shoulder. "You came to me, then, on Pluto, to cleanse yourself. Endymion was the princess's soulmate, and you could not properly serve the princess when a desire for her soulmate resided within you."

Serena flushed again, at the word 'desire.' What Lanai said next swept the embarrassment from her face and replaced it with something far worse.

"And because you could not resist the princess's soulmate, you were away on Pluto when the Dark Kingdom arrived and killed the princess."

(need to revise this really, really important sentence)

Serena felt dark and empty, as though she was a ballroom and the light in her had shattered, sending all the dancers streaming from the room. She tried to look at Miss Lanai and smile, as though what she had just told her had been something she had been expected, and oh, yes, now it made so much sense…

A sob escaped. She stuffed her fist into her mouth and hunched over. She had wanted so badly to think…she could have…and she had been stupid enough to think SHE might be the princess –

"There, there." A hand patted Serena's back awkwardly, with just fingertips, because Serena was vile and dirty, she was poisonous, she _was_ a traitor.

"I am very sorry." Miss Lanai's voice was kind. "It is no sin to love someone who loves another."

A phrase from long ago wisped through Serena's mind – _Unrequited love is an inevitable learning experience_. How ironic that Darien was the one who had said it. It drew a wet, choked laugh from her streaming self. Then she felt angry with herself for thinking of Darien at all; now, more than ever she must steel her resolve not to think of him –

"I have often found," said Miss Lanai, and Serena swipedher eyes, forcing herself to look at the older, sympathetic Senshi, "that the best escape from emotions is physical exertion. Shall we spar, Sailor Moon?"

Serena shook her head as she forced herself not to think of – of – that person – "He can sense me, when I transform – "

"This room is protected. None can sense us here through my protections, not even the earth prince. All any see when they look here in is an empty room, when they listen silence, should I will it, and I do."

Serena forced herself to her feet, locking her knees against the tremors they sent up her legs. She would not be weak. She would never be weak again. She knew what she existed for now. She had failed it in her last life; she would not fail it this time. Sailor Moon owed the Moon Princess. (and Serena Tsukino would pay that debt)

L

"I've enrolled you in online classes." Michiru entered the room and lowered herself gracefully onto the silk-coverleted bed. "It wouldn't do for us to have an ignorant Senshi, now, would it?"

Rei did not return the soft smile. She sat on the window seat of the tall window that looked out on the small backyard. The sunlight-warmed window pressed against her side.

"Are there spirits here?" Michiru asked after a moment of silence had passed. "We were able to purchase the house for a surprisingly small sum. Did someone commit suicide here?"

Rei frowned and pressed her cheek against the window until the glass dug into her cheekbone. On the other, dimmer end of the room, a girl who had been, when she was alive, a little older than Rei herself huddled and cried in the corner.

"I shall take that as a yes," Michiru looked around the room. "You could change rooms, you know. There are plenty more bedrooms upstairs with Haruka and myself."

Rei pressed her forehead to the glass now. "No."

"As you wish." Michiru stood. "I shall call you when it is suppertime. Then Haruka thought we might all go for a stroll. Be ready."

She shut the door behind her. The huddled spirit in the corner whimpered at the quiet sound. Rei felt contempt for both of them.

L

"Dare was a freaking spaz during Lit today." Asanuma gulped down some soda. "You notice that, Toki?"

"Something had him tetchy," agreed Motoki, a little distracted by the giggling gale of freshmen blushing to give their order to him at the cash register. "If – if you guys would just take a table, we'd be able to serve you much faster – "

Lita appeared, holding an empty tray. "Yes, why don't you all take that booth over there, and I'll be right over to take your orders?" She gave them a bared-teeth grin and pecked Motoki on the cheek. "Hey."

"…" Motoki looked a little dazed. He blinked, a grin unfurling on his face. "Hi."

"She only did that 'cause of the competition, you know," said Asanuma to him when the freshmen girls, faces crestfallen and with many rueful glances behind them, had been herded off to a large booth.

"Who cares why she did it?" Motoki still wore a stranded-on-Cloud-Nine expression. "Just that she _did_."

"Anyway," said Asanuma with a sigh and roll of his eyes. "Darien was acting weird."

"It's the first day of school he's attended without being able to see," said Motoki. "Isn't weirdness to be expected?"

"But he wasn't _brooding_," said Asanuma. "It was something different, like, he kept almost getting up out of his seat to do something. He was practically dancing in his seat, man!"

"Maybe he had to go to the bathroom." Motoki polished a glass. "Why are you so attuned to him, anyway?"

"Ha ha," said Asanuma scathingly. "That's rich coming from you, Momma Toki. My seat's right behind his, dodo brain. Anyway – " He pushed away from the counter. "I'm off…?!"  
"What, did you stub your tore AGAIN?" Motoki bent to lift the shake glasses from the dishwasher, not feeling very sympathetic toward Asanuma after the 'dodo brain' remark. "It's called divine justice – "

"Have you seen Serena?"

Motoki stood so suddenly he heard his spine pop. Standing on the other side of the counter, next to a wide-eyed Asanuma, was –

"_Darien_?" said Motoki.

"Obviously. Have you seen Serena?"

"_Shields_?" Lita had arrived order pad in hand, jaw unhinged.

"Go ahead, get it out of your systems." Darien's lip twisted. "Your turn, Asanuma."

But Asanuma shook his head. "We haven't seen Serena. Have you, Lita?"

"No, she had an elective last period…" Lita trailed off, eyes darkening. "Why? Did you feel – is she okay?"

Darien looked as though he might snap the cane in his hands. "Miss Lanai roped her into a class, and Serena agreed to it."

The bubbling emotion in his voice hissed onto cold ears.

"This again?" said Asanuma. His brows furrowed. "Darien, there's nothing wrong with Miss Lanai – "

"Then why isn't Serena here?" Darien's voice was a whip.  
Motoki blinked. "Uh – she has been in here since…" Well, he couldn't mention that, obviously. "For a long time."

"Relax, Shields." That was Lita's voice. Unveiled contempt sat in her voice. "Serena can take care of herself."

"And Miss Lanai isn't going to do anything to her, anyway!" Asanuma exclaimed heatedly. "What is WITH you guys?"

Darien didn't both arguing with them. He spun on a heel and left the arcade boiling. He couldn't believe the nonchalance of his friends – no, he could. But Lita, at least, her he has thought – he shoved the thoughts from his head. Naïve of him anyway to depend on them. On anyone. None of them knew, none of them understood…somewhere, somehow, he had penetrated through to a layer of mutuality with Serena, and _he _understood. He knew something was wrong, just from that mutual layer of existence he shared with her…

It was the first day of school and no clubs had stayed after; the campus was nearly deserted, no one there to see a supposedly blind youth striding as though he could see perfectly well. He reached the elective hall within moments and stalked like a panther down the linoleum.

Outside Miss Lanai's door at the end he stopped. He had not planned this far ahead…he decided to listen, for he could sense no feet on the concrete pushing into the earth, but that meant little, for the concrete was thicker in some places than others and might mask steps…

Only silence met his straining ears, though. That, and the thumping of his heart, the nearly mute flow of his breathing.

Darien wrestled with what to do next. He should open the door, but he could sense nothing within, and – he jiggled the doorknob silently – it was locked. Lanai had probably gone home, and Serena too – perhaps Serena had gone with her and was in her clutches even now, or perhaps Serena had gone home alone and been cornered by Shittenou – but he would have sensed it – he could sense it _now_, if he tried the rope –

Even as his thoughts led him to that course of action he was enacting it: he reached with a hand for the rope connecting him to Serena –

Darien clawed. And clawed again. Through empty air… Panic leapt up in his throat.

He wrenched the door. The wood around the knob splintered, cracked, crunched. He charged inside.

Silence. He heard only silence, no sound of breathing.

His blazer whipped behind him as he spun and sprinted out of the hallway. He kept his hands out – in front of him, to one side, then the other, behind him – the rope was nowhere to be found.

He ran, seeking her in every way he could. Submerging half his mind in the soil of the earth, for he could distinguish her tiny clipping footsteps from any other; inhaling hard through his nose, for he could pick out her rose and sugar scent anywhere like a single thread from a thousand-count sheet –

A thought roared into his stretching, seeking mind. Like a giant star into a black hole. It nearly jerked him to a stop on the sidewalk – but instead, it made him run faster. How long had it been since he had sensed her with the rope? Since he had used it? Had it vanished? Had it been cut? Had Serena, herself, cut it –

No. She wouldn't. Serena wouldn't think of cutting the rope to be rid of him – she _couldn't_.

But he was unsure, suddenly. Like an immense boulder slowly lifted from the ground by hundreds of weeds growing to creep beneath it, his trust began to waver.

This time Darien did stop in the middle of the sidewalk. He crouched, moving his arms in a slow, painstaking arc around himself, like a clock hand in slow motion. With each hour of that clock shape his heart climbed higher in his throat; betrayal throbbed louder in his skull.

His body jerked.

There.

He passed his hand through the air again, breath frozen in his lungs as though he stood on the edge of a precipice.

Darien snatched the rope like a pen that was rolling off the edge of his desk, lunging for it and seizing it. Sensation coursed into him: pain, pain, pain – then suddenly yanked and tore.

A snarl lunged like a chained dog in Darien's throat. His grip on the bucking rope tightened. He sprang to his feet, oblivious to the befuddled onlookers who had stopped around the crouched blind youma boy, and tore down the streets.

He felt it when she began to run – and when she stopped. So absorbed in this was he that he did not at first realize the hand that slapped his face was hers, and he seized in a bone-crushing grip the wrist of the hand that had slapped him.

Then he realized, and he loosened his hold. Serena snatched her hand away. He grabbed it again.

"HOW DARE YOU?" they both shouted at once.

Someone was trembling; Darien couldn't tel if it was Serena's hand in his or his around hers. He gripped harder.

She got to it first. "You had no right – "

"I thought you were dead!" he roared, cutting her off. "_What in the hell were you doing_?"

"Don't talk to me like that! Don't talk to me – to me – " She was twisting his grip now, like a corkscrew out of a hole; he grabbed her wrist with his other hand, too. But he nearly released it at the sound of her voice, which had fluttered like flower petals into jerking whispers.

The memory of Fiore's rose, the petals twisting away into the wind, splattered itself across his mind's eye like a bird flying into his windshield. He tried to writhe away from it, he felt across her face with a trembling hand, looking for wounds. He felt only her scars, the old thick scars – and hot tears. His grip tightened. "_What did she do to you?_"

"STOP it!" Somehow, he could never tell how she'd been abel to do it, Serena twisted out of his hands entirely. Anger boiled in her voice, but tears and mucus still thickened it. "STOP with Miss Lanai already! She didn't do anything! She's not BAD! God, Darien, get _over_ it…"

From Lita, Motoki, Asanuma, he had been able to handle this. They were other people, after all, they didn't have his and Serena's bond, they didn't understand… but Serena saying it now, to him, like this…he went suddenly cold and still and hard. The scalding panic and rage he had felt sublimated with a hiss into ice.

He straightened.

"Do you need help, miss?"

Darien felt eyes digging into him, edged with suspicion. He stepped back. His hands fell to his sides.

He heard her footsteps, pattering away.

L

That was the first step.

L


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Short last chapter, I know. It was important. If I added too much feather to fletch the arrow, the head wouldn't have penetrated its target. Apologies.

P.S. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR REVIEWS!!!! Especially Midnight-Nemesis, you're so kind. And HUGS to jade-eye!

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the proper nouns in this chapter.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Five: The Coming of Fall

L

Haruka listened to the balmy breeze that breathed past the upstairs window. "She's asleep."

"And most likely dreaming of what we're doing." Michiru's voice had its playful lilt, as usual, though her words were, Haruka knew, purely serious.

"Complain to Pluto. She's the one who told us to take her in." Haruka settled down against the couch and stretched out long legs. "Sit down, then, let's get this over with."

No sooner had Michiru alighted gracefully on the sofa cushion than the image appeared in the grandfather clock against the wall.

"Pluto." Both Michiru and Haruka acknowledged the Senshi, Michiru in a murmur.

"You wish to speak to me?"

"We're in Tokyo and we've got Mars." Haruka leaned back. "What are your orders now, O Mighty One?"

Pluto was silent for a moment. Her eyes swirled, a grey fog. Then at last, she said. "Begin to search for the talismans. Saturn must be awoken to save the princess."

"What are the criteria for the talismans' carriers, Pluto?" Michiru sat forward on the sofa, hands in her lap.

"Pure of heart. Do not take action now, merely begin finding possibilities. Events will be compounded if you act now."

Her image began to fade.

"Wait," said Haruka sharply. "What about the princess? Where can we find her?"

The pendulum in the grandfather clock began to swing again, slowly. "Not yet."

"Pluto!" Haruka sprang up, yelling. "You swore to tell us - !"

"Haruka." Michiru grabbed Haruka's arm. "Stop. You'll wake Rei. She's gone."

"That bitch." Haruka spoke with gritted teeth.

"I'm sure she has her reasons, Haruka, just as we have ours."

"I don't trust her."

"You don't have to." Michiru crossed the room, entering the kitchen. "We can do things our own way, in our own time."

L

The morning of the second day of school barely dawned, hidden by cloud. Summer was already surrendering to autumn, and Serena was glad, for to cover her scars she was wearing her long-sleeved uniform, and it had been hot. She was glad, too, for summer had been soaked in pain. Perhaps autumn would be different. Autumn _had_ to be different. She had to make sure it was.

Her parents no longer exclaimed at the early hour at which she left the house. The earlier she left, the longer route to school she could take, the less chance of running into Darien, and the earlier she reached school the less people there were to face.

And this morning, of course, she had a visit to make before the bell rang.

No sooner had Serena opened the art classroom door than a barrage of stones the size of potatoes hurtled toward her.

She dove to the floor, her hand flying to her brooch. Betrayal, sorrow, disgust with herself for again trusting a Senshi who had pretended friendship but wanted to kill her slammed into her like a battering ram –

"How will you protect the princess if you duck?"

The stones dropped to the floor and disappeared; Miss Lanai appeared from behind a canvas, paintbrush in her hand, a glare upon her features. "You must transform and repel the attack!"

Realization, like water upon a blaze, poured into Serena's mind: Miss Lanai had not been trying to kill her but to test her, as a beginning of her transformation.

She transformed immediately, remembering Miss Lanai's promise that her spell over the classroom concealed everything. Then she spread her feet, crouching and ready for the next attack.

There was only time for her to note that Miss Lanai was not transformed – she wore a skirt and turtleneck – before a fresh barrage of tin blades hurtled toward her –

"WAIT!" she cried.

The blades halted. Behind them, Miss Lanai lifted a brow.

"I don't have anything to repel an attack like that with," said Sailor Moon, haltingly, sheepishly. "Just one attack, like a chain, I can block that, but not a bunch of – of – "

"Projectiles?" said Miss Lanai from behind the curtain of blades.

"Yeah!" said Sailor Moon, relieved that the older Senshi understood.

"Exhibit your attacks for me."

Sailor Moon hesitated, flicking a glance around the room and the many breakable objects it contained. Then she lifted a hand to her tiara –

"Not now," Miss Lanai said sharply. "Wait for me to attack again. Then you may show me your attack."

The blade shot into motion again. Sailor Moon tore off her tiara and hesitated a second – then shoved the power into the metal with a shout "Moon Tiara Magic!"

The glowing discus sped toward the blades. It phased straight through them, causing tiny rains of black ash to shower to the ground, but there were too many. It couldn't get them all. Sailor Moon called "TIARA STARDUST!" and sparkles fell, but only beneath the tiara, ineffectively. Moon shielded her head wither arms and balled into a crouch, waiting for the blades to slice in.

They didn't. After a minute, she lifted her head.

"Again." The blades had disappeared; Miss Lanai kicked her tiara back across the floor toward her. Sailor Moon caught it and shoved it back on beneath her bangs. She scrambled to her feet as a new cloud of stones formed in front of Miss Lanai.

This time she used the tiara-sword. Stretching it with her mind as long and wide as she could, but the result was still the same. She could only destroy a few of the stones; the rest swirled in upon her. Again, they vanished, but not before a few had pelted her.

By this time, the first bell had just rung. Sailor Moon, dripping sweat, looked up at Miss Lanai.

"You will stay after school," Miss Lanai told her, neither her words nor her expression giving any hint to her opinion of Sailor Moon's attacks. "Do you need to go home today to tell your parents?"

Sailor Moon shook her head, detransforming. The sweat dried but heat still lay close beneath her skin.

L

She was the first one in the classroom; she erased the board for the teacher and emptied the pencil sharpener. After this there was no more to do, and she sat in her desk swinging her legs and looking out the window, thinking, until Lita arrived.

"What's this?" teased Lita, tugging on a ponytail as she arrived and leaned against her desk. "You beat me?"

Serena turned to smile at her, a little hesitantly. All weekend she had pondered it and been unable to decide whether or not to tell Lita about Miss Lanai – and about who she was.

Miss Lanai's identity was not hers to tell, she was certain. Yet it seemed equally puzzling that Miss Lanai had not chosen to reveal herself to Lita as well – unless of course she was respecting Serena – for by revealing herself to Lita, it followed that Lita would also learn what Serena had been, what she had done, in the Silver Millennium. Serena felt awed, almost guilted, by Miss Lanai's incredible kindness in protecting her secret. It followed, then, that she should pass on Miss Lanai's incredible act of trust and kindness by telling Lita…

But Serena was afraid. God, she was afraid. More afraid than she'd ever been. Rei, Luna, Ami, Mina – they had all left far deeper scars than she had ever realized, scars that Darien had to a very shallow extent foreseen, scars that dwarfed the silver stripes across her body. Lita was the only one who had trusted her, who hadn't hated her, who had believed her, trusted her ALWAYS even now, when Serena didn't trust herself, and she forsook time with Motoki for Serena and Serena didn't want to lose that; she'd already lost Darien she'd already lost Molly and Ami, had lost even her family, and Lita was all she had left, and if Lita blamed her, and she should blame her, but then that would be the last, the last and truest validation that she was a bad person. Because she was. She was, oh she was –

"Serena!" Lita's hand sat cool and calloused upon Serena's forehead, calling her back. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

"Oops! Sorry, I spaced out – " Serena pushed out a giggle, smiling sheepishly. "I was thinking."

Lita didn't look convinced. Serena's stomach dropped another inch. "Hey, did we have homework in here?" she asked in an apprehensive voice, opening her binder. "I was totally spacing yesterday, and now Mom's said if I don't keep C's this year she's taking my allowance away…"

"No, nothing." Lita seemed a little appeased by this white lie, also indignant on Serena's behalf. "That sucks. You'll be able to do better this year; there aren't you-know-what's running around needing to be dusted…"

Serena mustered a smile. "When you put it that way, it seems like the Senshi should wear maid's uniforms instead of fukus."

Lita recoiled. "Oh, don't you even! Those things are uncomfortable enough as it is – "

"Really?" said Serena despite herself. "I think they're pretty comfy – " Then she remembered Darien's modification, the pair of shorts beneath the skirt, and flushed.

"Oho," said Lita, not missing the blush and lifting her brows. "Do you now? "

"That came out wrong," Serena protested.

"Yeah, it did," Lita agreed. "And I'm not even Asanuma. How's P.E. with him, by the way?"

"Oh – okay," said Serena. She thought of another P.E. class dealing with Coach Etoukou and sighed.

"We still on for lunch today?" Lita sat in her desk as the teacher came in and began writing on the board.

"Huh? Oh! Yes," said Serena.

L

"Okay, this is beginning to look ridiculous." Asanuma slammed his tray down at the table. Motoki glanced up at him, then returned to his fettuccine alfredo.

"Can you at least muster some indignation?" demanded Asanuma, throwing himself into the plastic chair so violently the whole table shook.

The sophomores in the adjacent table threw him dirty looks; he stuck two French fries up his nose and snorted at them. Then he turned back to Motoki.

"We're seniors, for God's sake! We shouldn't be sitting here alone like the Power Ranger freaks!"

He was referring to the two bespectacled, pimply boys who had become infamous for running around at P.E. shouting Power Ranger attack at each other and playing with Power Ranger figurines at lunch while drinking out of Power Ranger thermoses.

Motoki turned a little red. "They're only two tables away!" he muttered at Asanuma. "They'll hear you!"

Asanuma, fries still in his nose, cast the Power Ranger table – which everyone gave a wide berth – a disdainful glance. "Please. They're too busy yelling 'hi-ya!'"

"Like you're much better," muttered Motoki, thinking of their training sessions and Asanuma's enthusiastic emulations of the Karate Kid.

"Excuse me." Asanuma yanked the fries out of his nose. "I actually have a mission to fulfill – "

"Unlike those lesser mortals," finished Motoki, spearing another noodle on his fork and lifting it to his eye to examine it tiredly. If being dramatic and grumpy helped Asanuma feel better about Darien not eating with them at lunch, he had Motoki's blessings. "Did you do the calc homework?"

Asanuma snorted. "Of course not."

"You do realize colleges look at our senior year grades?"

"You do realize we have bigger things to worry about than college?"

Motoki sighed and shut up. This placated Asanuma for only a while; after a minute he demanded, "Where is Darien, anyway?"

L

Darien was striding down the halls. His aura crackled around him like lightning or perhaps a swarm of bees, for he was making a beeline straight to the art classroom.

He opened the door.

"I told you to keep your filthy hands off of her."

"Ah, 'ot Boy – "

The cloth that he seized in his fist was slippery; he gripped it together as he felt her pulling away.

"I do not zink zat you wish to be doing zis, 'ot Boy."

Her voice was quiet and not afraid. The only person who ever did seem to be afraid of him lately was Serena. And he was sick of it.

He tightened his grip. "Don't I?"

"What makes you zink zat I 'ave 'urt Marin? I zink – razher zat it was you 'o 'as 'urt 'er. _Non_?"

"What game are you playing, Lanai?" Darien spoke slowly, enunciating. He jerked her up higher, felt her feet leave the ground.

He felt it coming before it reached him, the slap, and he dropped her, knocking her hand away hard. He felt through the floor the way she landed, in a crouch with hands splayed, not gracelessly on her rear, and it made him even more suspicious.

He nearly hissed. "What are you up to?"

"I am _up_ to _nozzing_, 'ot Boy." At last she was angry; she had spat it out. "Now get out before I report you to ze principal. And _stay away_ from Marin!"

L

"Miss Lanai?" Serena stood in the doorway. "What happened to your shirt?" The pretty turtleneck collar was torn away from the rest of the shirt; a hole gaped there, revealing Miss Lanai's collarbone and the bright gem pendant that Serena had once seen and taken as possible proof that Miss Lanai was the Moon Princess. She hadn't been so VERY far off…

"Zis?" Miss Lanai plucked at the collar nonchalantly, still holding a paintbrush in her hand. A smudge of red paint sat upon her brow above her glasses. "It caught on a hook, zat is all…"

"Miss Lanai, why do you pretend to be French?" The question popped out of Serena involuntarily, and she began to apologize. "Sorry, I – "

Miss Lanai waved it off, untying her smock. "It makes sense, does it not? If I forget some words in this language, it would not seem suspicious if I am supposedly from France."

"Why would you forget words in this language? Aren't you from Japan?"

At first Serena thought that Miss Lanai had not heard her question; she was in the supply room hanging up her smock and did not respond. Then she came out again.

"My memories are from Pluto, my life there, though I cannot recall clearly the princess, how she looked. My first language, for all purposes, is that of Pluto. Japanese is a second language for me."

"Oh." This seemed very interesting to Serena; she imagined having a whole life already in your mind when you were only a child. Would you think it was just a bunch of dreams? Like – her eyes widened – "Miss Lanai, Sailor Pluto, I mean – "

Miss Lanai shook her head. "Call me by my civilian name."

"Okay, sorry," said Serena quickly. "Do I have my memories from the moon? I mean, I'm a Senshi, too – and so's Lita, and Ami and Rei – do we have our memories? Why don't we remember them, the way you do?"

Miss Lanai's lips pursed on one side. She regarded Serena for a moment, tilting her head. Serena wondered if maybe Miss Lanai didn't know if they couldn't really remember their memories, if she'd thought that they did – but no, she would have known that Serena didn't know because otherwise she would have remembered what she'd done…guilt flushed through her again.

"Let us compromise," said Miss Lanai, drawing Serena out of the wave of shame. "We shall train first. Then, at the end, I will answer your questions. Now, transform."

Serena transformed with a bit of apprehension. She had been unable to block the projectiles that Miss Lanai had sent at her that morning – her attacks were insufficient, of course, she had not learned any new attacks and could use only her tiara, unlike the other girls –

But Miss Lanai did not send walls of projectiles at her; she sketched, with the paintbrush in her hand, a sword in the air. Sailor Moon watched in fascination as the two-dimensional sword suddenly became three-dimensional, falling forward into Miss Lanai's waiting hand. The blade was silver, the hilt gold with red stones embedded in the pommel.

"That's your power?" said Sailor Moon excitedly. "You can paint weapons and they turn real?"

"More or less," Miss Lanai replied with a smile, then charged.

Sailor Moon barely got her tiara off, elongated, and up in time; there was a tremendous crash of blades. They struggled for a moment, both pushing, then Miss Lanai swept a leg out. Sailor Moon stumbled backward just in time, but the break in attention let Miss Lanai sweep down at her with the sword.

She stopped an inch from her throat. Then took a few steps backward. "Again."

They sparred like that for the rest of seventh period and beyond it; Sailor Moon flinched when the bell rang, allowing Miss Lanai to penetrate her guard, and glanced toward the door.

"I have told you no one can see us in this room," Lanai said, fairly shouting. She bashed Moon's blade with the flat side of hers. "Again!"

By the time the setting sun splashed orange light into the room, Sailor Moon's fuku was soaked and her arm muscles burned like the noodles she had once set on fire in Home Ec. But she had also gotten her sword to Miss Lanai's throat twice, and she was glowing from the delight of that accomplishment.

"Enough," said Miss Lanai at last. She too, was shiny with perspiration, tendrils of dark hair stuck to her flushed face. "You may go home now."

Sailor Moon lowered her tiara-sword. "But my question – "

"Ah." Miss Lanai smiled grimly, swiping her face and letting her sword dissolve. A streak of gold and red paint darkened her palm where she had gripped the sword. "You have a good memory."

"But _I _don't remember the Silver Millennium," said Serena, detransformed. "I think."

"I told you that I was the only one, other than the princess and the queen, who knew your true identity." Miss Lanai moved to her desk chair and sat. "For that reason, I believe, I retain my memories and the rest of the Senshi do not."

"But why take away our memories at all? If we knew who the princess was, we would be able to find her and protect her – "

"As toddlers?" Miss Lanai lifted her brows. "No, you would reveal your powers and be snatched up at once to be studied by science and never get anywhere near the princess."

"Luna said, though – Luna said that as we got older, our memories would return. Why not give them to use when we turn a certain age, like when we became Senshi, so we could find the princess – "

"Do you recall that Sailor Venus did not know the identity of the princess?"  
Serena blinked. "She didn't?"

"No. She wished to find the princess by using Endymion, with whom the princess shares a soulbond."

"But – but Venus had been alive since the Silver Millennium, how could she not remember – "

"Ah," said Miss Lanai. "Exactly. Someone, somewhere, has blocked the Senshi's memories. Recall that Venus recognized Mercury and Mars and Jupiter – "

"But not me."

"Because she did not know you were a Senshi! She believed you to be a handmaiden!" Miss Lanai spoke sharply; Serena blushed. She must be annoyed at having to teach such a dull-witted student… "She remembered the other Senshi's appearances, but she did not remember the princess's. That means that someone has blocked the Senshi's memories of the princess. And the only person I can think of who would do this…is the princess herself."

"But…why?" Serena frowned. Then she thought of Mina and Ami and Rei. "Oh…" she breathed.

"What?" Miss Lanai watched her with her hawk's eyes.

"She doesn't want us to get hurt, does she?" Serena said, affection for the princess welling up inside her despite of everything. The princess had never wanted them to be hurt, she had tried to protect them! Guilt, more than ever, spilled into Serena like poison, for she had resented the princess who had all along been trying to protect her and all the Senshi… She murmured quietly, "She was trying to protect the Senshi."

"No." Miss Lanai shook her head. "That is what the Senshi are for; it is what they were born to do. She must respect…our duty. But she is afraid. She – I am sorry, Serena, but I think that she has placed the memory block on the Senshi because she is afraid that they will betray her…"

_Like you did_. Serena heard the unspoken end of Miss Lanai's sentence. It was written across her face, in the sympathetic expression. And the pain was sharper and more acute this time, as though the guilt and affection she had felt for the princess had carved a deeper pit in her heart for the acid self-contempt to fill.

"Then…I shouldn't be a Senshi," Serena forced herself to say. "If she's afraid of me – "

"No!" Miss Lanai shot up from her chair. "It is why you MUST become a Senshi. A strong one! So that you may be worthy of her and show to her that you will not betray her ever! Never again! Then, and only then will she reveal herself to us."

"I…see." Serena, bending her head, saw her briefcase on the floor. She bent, lifted it and moved toward the door. "Thank you, Miss Lanai." She bowed. "I understand. I'll see you tomorrow."

L

"May I ask what you are doing, En – Darien-sama?"

"Working," said Darien. "Unlike some people around here."

He heard Helios sigh behind him and ignored it. He was still angry at Helios for not finding out anything more about the Shittenou; on top of his encounter with Serena and his encounter with Miss Lanai, he was a snarly and extremely discourteous Dare-Bear.

A tic was beginning to form in his cheek, as he scrolled down his ninth Google search. He'd found from the school website that Miss Lanai's first name was Lonnie – which may perhaps have been the cause for all of her psychotic irregularities – but the only mention of her name anywhere was once in the local newspaper for a painting that had been selected for the local museum gallery. A painting that, when he clicked on the link, had turned out to be one with which he was very familiar – of which he had been a subject, in fact.

By the time Darien at last gave up searching, he had come across the painting on seven people's MySpace's, four people's Facebooks, and two blogs, and he felt like cracking Miss Lanai's ribcage open with his bare hands.

Helios, wisely, had retreated several meters away. "What has vexed you?" he called to him as Darien slammed his laptop shut.

Darien shot him a venomous glare. "It has to do with Serena, are you sure you want to know?"

The feathery priest spoke often of the Moon Princess: Her Highness this, Endymion loved the Moon Princess that. Darien was no idiot; it was Helios' _subtle_ way of reminding Darien that he was in love with the princess, not Serena. The embarrassment Darien felt at Helios having noticed this only incensed him further.

"Beg pardon, but Your Majesty is being unreasonable – "

Darien did not wait to hear more; he strode out of Elysion with the laptop under his arm. In his room he threw it on his bed and continued, without breaking his stride, to the balcony, where he jumped onto the railing fully transformed. He felt the tiny surge of Serena-ness, soft but sad, sleeping.

He went to her tree, anyway, and breathed upon the tree leaf again to see her. She was asleep, safe, the tree leaf showed him. Seeing the painting again had dredged up all his memories of the detention days they had spent posing for it, before they knew each other's identities...if life had continued like that, without them ever discovering each other's identities…or if they weren't Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask at all…could they have – would she have –

Tuxedo Mask stopped himself there. She didn't like him back, and she wouldn't have even if their lives had been totally different – if they weren't reincarnations of other people. There was no other way than what this was. _Stop being a sadistic moron and move on_.

He pushed himself out of the tree. A mile away, he stopped atop a rooftop and sat, listening for any sign of the Shittenou.

Sinking deep into the ocean of his mind, he seeped into the expanse of earth beneath him, aware of each different layer of soil and every root hair on the island, and the water that lapped against it at the distant edges. He was alert not for mortals but generals; he breathed as the tree inhaled, breathed as the wind blew, breathed as the clouds exhaled; he pulsed with the earth's heartbeat and _listened_.

It was difficult, though he had done it before, for limited periods of time, merging with his planet. Searching was hard. Roots did not grow in grids; they groped out and snaked through the soil in disorganized, wishful curls; soil of one type did not line up with the other type, and the juxtapositions were distracting, absorbing; his mind, like his feet tugged slowly, unnoticeably out by the tide at the beach, inching slowly, unnoticeably toward fascinated examination of the mosaic formed by the leaves fallen here, the aesthetic chaos of the ant tunnels there… Finding people was _hard_. And the wind was being difficult tonight. Like a willful stallion yanking at its bit, it snapped and reared as he seized at it. The water in the air, too, seemed more slippery than he remembered from the last time he had done this, evading his awareness. With all these difficulties, he found only Serena and Lita's glowing presences that night before the sun rose in the grey horizon.

But the time with his planet had soothed and calmed him in a way he had not been for a long time. He opened dry eyes and returned home to dress for school.

L

There was barely a second's warning before a fresh barrage of projectiles came shooting at her. This time it was a rain of needles as thin as hairs.

Dragging in another shallow breath, Sailor Moon tore off her tiara and forced it into a longer shape, then slashed it in front of her to bat the needles away. She only managed halfway. The left side of her body not covered by her fuku was penetrated by the tiny stings. She gave a little gasp.

"A release of energy from the blade would have disintegrated them." Miss Lanai's footfalls clicked closer.

Sailor Moon pulled a pencil-length needle from her cheek. It grabbed and caught at the scar tissue like a ragged fingernail catching at fabric. A tiny stream of hot blood trickled down her jaw. She pulled out the rest of the needles, seven in all, reminding herself that in Senshi form, the wounds would heal momentarily.

"I thought that the tiara itself was made of energy when it glows like this," she said, gathering her thoughts and standing. She still held the tiara like a sword in her hand. "Isn't it?"

"You have another attack, yes? Show it to me, and then I shall tell you." Miss Lanai lifted her hand again, swirling her paintbrush through the air.

Sailor Moon blinked. Miss Lanai had lowered her hand, but nothing was in the air between them. It reminded her of –

She whipped her head back. Grey hurtled down at her.

Her eyelids slammed shut; she threw her arms over her head and wheezed through a constricting throat, "Moon Twilight Flash!"

She heard the breathy sigh of the boulder above her exploding into millions of dust motes; they showered down around her, settling all down her throat. She coughed and coughed and coughed.

"Almost," said Miss Lanai. "But it is still through a medium."

Eyes watering as though someone had just jabbed them with a pen, Sailor Moon lowered her head in understanding.

Lanai handed her a glass of water. "Drink," she said, and Moon did, with much gagging and spluttering.

"Will you explain now?" she coughed at last.

"Has there ever been anything that a teacher has taught to you but you were unable to comprehend when she taught it? Then some time later you observed the actual phenomenon taking place and it seemed very easy to understand though it was impossible to when the teacher explained it?"

Sailor Moon blinked slowly, trying to discern Lanai's point. "Yes," she said at last, honestly.

Miss Lanai smiled at her. "Then you will understand when I tell you that I will not explain it to you now but wait until you have begun to see a little of it yourself. You may go home now, Serena."

L

At school Darien and Serena each avoided the other. Azabu was not as small as the Catholic girls' school, but it was not sprawling, either, and for anyone else, it would have been impossible to avoid seeing someone on campus for weeks. But Serena and Darien did. Perhaps unconsciously guided by the rope that was quickly dwindling to a string, perhaps by fate, perhaps by something else. Serena arrived early and left long past the bell; Darien arrived scarcely before the bell and left as soon as it rang.

He patrolled each night after visiting Elysion to check for news of the generals with Helios. She returned in time for dinner, to chew it mechanically and fall into bed. Nightmares still haunted her sleep; sleep could not reach him. He pushed it away, muscles trembling with fatigue as he vaulted twenty feet above the streets. She tried to pull away from it, eyes darting beneath their lids as she twisted in her sheets.

His mind never gave up trying to find ways that he could somehow be with her, searching with increasing desperation to find a leak in the ship, a hole in the logic.

Her mind never gave up trying to find ways that they were totally wrong for each other, coming up each waking moment with another reason that she did not deserve him and he deserved better than her.

L

"Very good," Miss Lanai said on the day Sailor Moon disintegrated a whole boulder without shouting her attack. Instead, she thought about it, and the beam shot from her tiara. "Nonverbal is the next level."

"Will I be able to use my attacks without transforming, like you do?" Sailor Moon panted, hands on her knees. Not shouting the attack had drained her a little; it felt as though she had not had control over the attack's strength, and instead it had rushed out of her in an unbridled gush. Indeed, the boulder had not exploded into dust this time but seemed instead to have almost completely evaporated. But the weariness could also be from the nightmares that woke her in the middle in the night.

Miss Lanai, who stood as calm and cool as ever in her long skirt and blouse, smiled. "If you continue your training, which you shall, yes."

Serena waited until the next day to ask the question that had been nagging her. There was a lot of time to think at night, when one could not get back to sleep, and she did not let herself think about Darien. So she had been thinking a lot about Miss Lanai.

"Could I see you transformed, Miss Lanai?" she asked, hoping as she spoke that this was not a terribly taboo request. Sailor Pluto knew so much more than Serena and the other Senshi had or did, save Venus, and perhaps seeing another's Senshi form outside of exigency was rude.

But Miss Lanai met her request with her usual cordial smile. "Someday," she said. "I would like to keep my presence here unknown for as long as possible yet. You never know when there are eyes."

"The room is sealed, though."

"Yes. But it never does to overestimate one's abilities. And there is always someone stronger than you – for everyone except one person, of course," she finished, with a glint in her eyes that Serena supposed must be wry humor.

Serena sighed. Miss Lanai, very nice and polite and smart though she was, just did not seem a very kindred spirit – such as now, with her sense of humor. She always seemed amused by things that Serena could not see a speck of hilarity in. But she was teaching Serena, patiently, and already Serena felt more strength in her muscles, in her attacks, in her confidence. For that she would owe Miss Lanai forever, and these things would have been worth even spending every afternoon with Luna.

Well, maybe.

Still, she wondered what Miss Lanai's fuku looked like. What color was it? Her eyes seemed a strange shade sometimes, not quite brown but something deeper, like a very dark red. Perhaps this was the color of her fuku? Ami's eyes had been blue, her fuku blue; Rei's eyes violet and her fuku bow purple, Lita's eyes green and her fuku green. Perhaps it was indicative.

Sailor Moon fell into wondering and was only knocked out of it when a blade sliced past her cheek. She started and fell into a defensive stance, and they returned to their sparring.

L

On the thirteenth day of school Serena stopped eating lunch with Lita.

"She's working on some sort of art contest entry with Miss Lanai," Lita told Motoki as they were walking home together after closing the arcade that night. "I guess Miss Lanai thinks she's got a lot of talent. Serena seems pretty happy about it. She walks like she's got somewhere to go now, you know?"

In Serena's absence, Lita joined Motoki and Asanuma at the lunch table inside. The oak tree was left deserted. Autumn was coming. It would have been too cold to sit out there soon, anyway, Motoki pointed out.

A few days later Asanuma took his leave of the lunch table.

"Mr. Ongaku wants me to draw a new logo for the jazz band and paint two banners," he said. "You two love birds won't be too lonely without me, right?"

Serena trained with Miss Lanai in the art room.

Darien sat in the library beside an unopened book and untouched soda.

Asanuma sketched silently in the echoing band hall.

Motoki and Lita sat at the table for six with bento boxes that had once fed five.

The weeks passed.

L


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Last chapter was weird. That one, this one, and the next one were originally going to go together, but it was a weird time flow. It's still a weird time flow, actually. Probably because Sailor Pluto isn't very happy with me right now.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the proper nouns in this chapter.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Six: Arrivals

L

"Tell me you know more, Helios." Darien entered Elysion like a tornado: dark, swift, and moving with purpose. He held a hand open to the ground and wrenched up the sapling that sprouted there, holding it like a sword and striding forward.

"This one must admit failure, my prince." Helios looked windblown, like a dog that has been sticking its head out of the car window. His fair hair stuck astrew all around the unicorn horn that protrude from his head; the white feathers of his wings pointed in all different directions. "There has been – "

He stopped, and so did Darien, as a gale of wind whipped suddenly across the meadow. Flowers petals – and even some whole flowers – were torn from their stems and hurtled through the air. The flowers and blades of grass bent nearly in half backwards.

Then, as quickly as the wind had begun, it ceased, and the flower petals fell to the ground, the stems bounced back up.

Darien looked at Helios, nostrils aflare.

Helios's eyes were unfocused, his light irises barely visible against his sclera.

"So?" Darien barked.

Helios's eyes snapped shut. Then wide again. He sighed and shook his head, bowing it. "Another one, Your Highness. I apologize, but they are too garbled – this one was almost – I thought that I had understood, but the other said – "

"Make sense!" Darien snapped. The leaves of the sapling in his hand yellowed and curled, then fell to the ground, until he held only a long length of wood. "Are the Shittenou back or not?"  
"The Shittenou should not be your greatest worry, Your Highness!" Darien's short-wicked temper seemed to have lit Helios's; the fair youth's eyes flashed like diamonds in sunlight. "There are High Senshi in our system!"

Darien's mind sped to what he knew of High Senshi – _"the oldest and most powerful Senshi in the universe,_" Helios had called them. _"Through their High Council they direct and command all other Senshi._"

_And they would have taught the princess if she hadn't died_, came the extra, unwelcome detail. Had they come for her? Good luck to them, then – but of course it wouldn't be that easy. It never was.

"What do they want?" he demanded.

"I have only been able to discover that they are here, not their goals – "

"And you didn't think to tell me about this earlier?" Darien said icily.

"It was falling from the tip of my tongue as Your Noble Highness spun away and left Elysion hot on the trail of the Shittenou last time!" Helios's eyes had actually darkened now, to a pale blue, and red burned high in his fair cheeks. "If you expect omnipotence from me, perhaps you should at least wait to hear it! And while you are modifying your behavior, perhaps you should start acting more like a monarch and less like a youth denied his favorite toy!"

Rather than enraging Darien, this outburst from subservient Helios silenced Darien. Like a mirror, he saw his black behavior, and it sickened him. It was not a foreign emotion to the black-haired youth.

He snatched all of the anger that had spilled out of him and stuffed it back in, smoothing his face.

"Do you have any idea as to why High Senshi would be here?"

Helios seemed prepared to allow them to ignore what had just transpired. He lowered his hands to his sides. "Myriad ones. They all lead back to the princess. You will find, in time, Darien-sama, that all paths lead back to her; all motives lead to her, and all destinies eventually intertwine with hers."

"Oh, I know," said Darien. The fangs of his voice dripped venom. "I know, Helios."

Helios regarded him. "I don't think you truly do," he said coldly. "But you will." He rubbed his left wrist. "The princess is somewhere on Terra right now, we must assume. The High Senshi need her to defeat Chaos. Chaos will have been weakened by your slaying of Kisenian Blossom, so we may hope – tenuously – that they will not mount a large-scale search to find her. But they are looking for her, and the fact that they are here but have not contacted you, the ruler of the planet, for permission to be on your planet, is worrying."

"I'm hardly the de facto ruler," said Darien, still stiffly. "I can't control who comes in or out."

"Can't you?" Helios looked at him. His gaze seemed to unlock in Darien's mind images of all the things he had done outside of Elysion when he was blind, actually allowing him to see them: moving trees, lifting gallons upon gallons of water, removing oxygen from the air. Moving a whole ocean up out of the sea to stop Kisenian's comet.

Darien realized he was rubbing at his temples. "Stop," he muttered. Then, more loudly, "Stop, Helios!"

Helios looked away. "I did nothing, Darien-sama."

The nervous note of fear in his voice convinced Darien that he spoke truth. Darien sighed and returned to the topic. "I couldn't keep the most powerful Senshi out if they wanted to be here." A voice in his head reminded him that he had kept out Kisenian, who had over a dozen High Senshi kills to her credit, out. From the look Helios gave him, the priest was also thinking this, too.

"But," said Darien. "They probably don't think I know I'm…" He paused. "The ruler of the planet. They do know that we've lost our memories, don't they?" he added musingly.

Helios looked worried. "I do not know, Endymion-sama. I know only that in our time, during the Silver Millennium, it was a grave breach of protocol for a being of Senshi-level power to set foot on a planet without the permission of its ruler. No small amount of wars began because of such a breach."

"I'm not about to start any wars," said Darien sharply. "They should have the princess, anyway. She'll be safer with them than she is here."

He hesitated, not noticing the glitter of Helios's eyes at his words. His mind was battling itself over whether to ask or not – the decision to ask won out, for Helios already more than suspected his feelings toward Serena. "They won't do anything to the Sailor Senshi, will they?" he asked casually. "Like Jupiter and Moon."  
"It was not because I like to talk that I said the High Senshi are a far more pressing danger than the Shittenou, Darien-sama." Helios spoke coldly. "If you will not concern yourself about the High Senshi for the princess's sake, then by all means, at least concern yourself about them for Serena's sake."

L

"So," Asanuma said in PE as he held down her feet for sit-ups. "How are you liking Miss Lanai?"

"She's…" Serena levered herself up, arms crossed in front of her in an "X," and tried to remember how the fake Miss Lanai, the one Asanuma was used to, would have behaved to her.

"Ah." Asanuma gave her a knowing look without her answering. "You've seen through her, have you? I should have expected it from you, the Great People-Penetrater."

"I'm not a People-Penetrater," protested Serena, a little breathlessly from all the sit-ups. She realized that a normal teenage girl shouldn't be doing so many sit-ups so quickly and slowed down.

Asanuma gave her a little grin. "Da Nile ain't just a river in Africa, Serena-chan."

This was making Serena remember what Miss Lanai had said about her having an aura that drew people in. She changed the subject. "What do you mean about Miss Lanai?"

"Well, she's not the paint-fume-high hippy she seems like, is she?" Asanuma sat back on his heels as a shrill whistle pierced the air. "A hundred and nine! Those are some abs you've got there, Serena-chan! Anyway – " He situated himself on the mat, and Serena dug her knees into his toes. Another whistle phweeted and he began his sit-ups. "She's pretty deep. Kind of a reactionary, though, you wouldn't expect that from an artist."

"Reactionary?" Serena tried to count and pay attention at the same time. It was hard enough keeping Asanuma's feet against the floor as he sat up and down. She'd never realized how big he was before, she realized. He wasn't as tall as Motoki, and he was skinnier than Darien, but he still dwarfed her.

"Far right," said Asanuma. "Practically militantly conservative. Like this one time we were talking because I'd drawn this political cartoon for the school newspaper, you know?" He paused, lying on the floor to catch his breath, his chest heaving. "Man, how'd you do all those so fast, Serena?" He sat up and began again. "Someone was talking about Russia turning all communist and getting powerful again, and how there's going to be a war between them and the Americans again. She started saying that the United States was too powerful and it needed to be crushed." He grinned at the surprised expression on Serena's face. "I know, right? Who'd expect she even has a clue what's going on on this planet, much less an opinion about it?"

Serena started a little when Asanuma said "planet," for it seemed impossible for him to have used such an expression coincidentally. But he continued on, oblivious, and her heart rate calmed down again.

"So she's not really just a matchmaker fiend. I still don't know why she had so much fun with you and Darien. Does she still tease you about it?"

Here, she noticed that he watched her closely but nonchalantly, from beneath his long eyelashes. She mirrored him. "Oh, not really," she said.

She did wonder, though. Why _had_ Miss Lanai pushed her toward Darien so hard when she had known all along that in the Silver Millennium she had betrayed the princess with him…

It was a question that she nervously but determinedly brought up that afternoon. It caught Miss Lanai mid-painting of a sword in the air. The sword solidified and clattered to the ground, just a silver blade, hiltless.

"Well." The art teacher paused, then sighed and swept her braid over her shoulder, bending to pick up the half-finished sword. She rose again with it in her hand. "I am sorry to have done it to you but not sorry to have done it; it was necessary for me to check, Serena, that you could resist Darien. Had you been unable, I would not have sought you out and revealed the truth of your past."

"But – I didn't know he was the prince then," said Serena, feeling that she sounded as though she was whiny and trying to modulate her voice. "I didn't know that he was – " She broke off, for there was no graceful way to say "taken" or even "unavailable."

"Yet you did resist him," said Miss Lanai. She was not looking at Serena anymore; she was painting a hilt along the bottom of the sword blade. Serena winced guiltily at having forced Miss Lanai into such an awkward conversation. "And that showed that not only did you have strength but also that, somewhere, you also knew that to be with him was – would be – inherently wrong."

'Inherently wrong.' What a strange phrase to describe her relationship with Darien. The secret, warm fountain of delight that bubbled up when he got protective, the way he permitted her ruffle his hair but no one else, his fiery but gentle frustration, how he could read her thoughts before she'd even found what page she was on. Yet Serena did not contest it, for if she could not even get long division problems right, then it was certainly possible and even probable that she was wrong in this, too.

Miss Lanai lifted the sword and lifted her eyebrows. "So."

Serena transformed. She was hard-pressed to yank the tiara from her brow and stretch it into a sword before Miss Lanai's slammed down on her. But she did it, and the sweat that popped out on her brow was, she thought, a good disguise for the trickle of tears that seeped out of her eyes.

L

Darien left Elysion without apologizing to Helios for his outburst. The priest had nettled him immensely, and Darien stomped back into his apartment feeling as though he didn't have an ally in the world. Passing through the kitchen, he realized that he hadn't checked his phone messages in days. He punched the message button at the same time his mind presented him with the small number of people who might actually call him, from which it subtracted the number of people to whom he'd actually speak. There was only one person right now, and she wouldn't be calling him for a very long time. Fresh anger surged through him, and a message began.

"This is Nakao Clinic, calling to remind," the automated voice paused and filled the break with a carefully enunciated 'Darien Shields' before continuing "of his appointment at – " Another break. 'Two-thirty, on Wednesday the fourth.' "Thank you."

A new layer of irritation spread over the still wet layers of anger and resentment. He'd forgotten about damned doctors' visits. And Wednesday was tomorrow; he'd planned to skip school and patrol for High Senshi…

L

"So." Haruka slid the plate with the slice of pizza onto the table in front of her and then sat down across from her. Beside Haruka, Michiru sat gracefully with a plate of perfectly-garnished salad. "It's time for us to talk about what you know, Miss Rei."

Soft jazz music spilled from the state-of-the-art stereo in the corner of the dining room. The enormous picture windows opened onto the sight of the sprawling, perfectly manicured front lawn and the iron-wrought gate that separated it from the deserted street. The new digs were quite opulent, though perhaps the fact that a girl had committed suicide here had driven the price of the house down a bit. The mansion still must have cost a pretty penny, Rei had surmised grimly, and she took a bite of pizza, frowning at Haruka's face yet again to figure out how she and Michiru had afforded this place.

"Hello? Uranus to Mars?" Haruka passed a hand in front of Rei's face.

Rei speared her with a glare. She had really gotten sick of that same joke being used over and over again. It had been stale the first time she used it.

"Rei, dear." Michiru cut a cherry tomato perfectly in half. "I think you might understand our anxiety when I tell you we are concerned about the Senshi Sailor Moon."

The pizza in Rei's mouth turned to cardboard. She swallowed. "How long had you been watching me?"

"Not just you, munchkin." Haruka reached to ruffle her hair; Rei, very accustomed to the gesture, had her fork up like lightning. It clanged against the knife that had appeared in Haruka's hand. "Don't be conceited."

This was a question Rei had been pondering for some time now, but only now had she found the opportunity to ask it without courting suspicion. "Why didn't you find Ami, then?"

Haruka and Michiru exchanged glanced with each other over their glasses of wine, like parents deciding how to tell a child that she wasn't going to get the little sister she was hoping for.

"We did not think that Ami would have responded very well to our…personalities," Michiru said at last, delicately, and placed another cherry tomato half in her mouth.

"Your bitchiness, you mean," said Rei.

"Exactly." Haruka grinned at her. "But you fit with us perfectly, fellow bitch!"

Rei glowered at her again. "Do you know where Ami is?" she demanded outright, sick of the careful, blindfolded dance she played with these two.

They exchanged glances again. "We know someone who knows, how about that?" said Haruka, in her effectively-closing-that-topic voice. "Now, back to Serena Tsukino. How big of a threat is she?"  
"Barely five feet." Rei took a bite and chewed, smirking nastily.

Haruka rolled her eyes. "Ha ha. Luna's dead, you know."

This time, Rei did not forget to keep chewing. But shock radiated through her like seismic waves. She kept it from reaching her eyes. "Few living things could have deserved it more."

"Some would say the same about you." Haruka's nasty smirk mirrored Rei's.

Rei didn't bother to dignify this with a response; it was true, and she knew it. Had come to terms with it. "What killed her?"

This time, Haruka and Michiru did not exchange glances. "We're not sure," Michiru said. "It occurred at about the same time as our first meeting, we think. A bit before."

A thought struck Rei that she could not believe had not occurred to her before. "How do you know all this?" she demanded.

It was as though this first admission by the two older Senshi that they were not totally omnipotent, this first ever note of uncertainty in their voices, had opened a window through which a fresh gust of air now rushed, blowing apart the rest of the curtains and flooding a room with moonlight by which to see. How did they know Luna was dead? How had they known where to find her? How had they known of Serena, and where Ami was – or rather, who knew where she was?

"Why should we tell you anything when you haven't told us?" Haruka leaned forward.

"If you're going to use that argument, Ruka, it's far too circular," murmured Michiru. "We've barely told her anything either. Less even than we have been told."

Haruka shot Michiru an exasperated look that nevertheless held affection in the form of an upcurved lip. "Whose side are you on here?"

The honey-blonde woman placed a hand on Haruka's arm. "We may not tell you anything more yet," she told Rei, "because we ourselves are as clueless as you about some things, and the source we have would no longer give information to use should we reveal certain things. Rest assured, however, that our mission lies with the princess and the Senshi. We are no traitors."

"Sailor Moon however, is a different story," said Haruka, eyes like embers, as soon as Michiru finished. "Surely you noticed then that she doesn't fit?"

And surely if two separate parties – Luna and these two Senshi – had noticed that Serena was an anomaly, then she was. Rei could still see, could still feel, taste, even, the anxiety like a wad of cloth in her mouth, that night at the prom, Asanuma's laughter, Serena's loopy handwriting that she hadn't even bothered to disguise, that damned Naruto sticker –

"If you know so much about Luna, then you should know about Sailor Venus, too." Rei's voice was flat. The other two Senshi shook their heads. "She was a traitor, in the end. But she wasn't reincarnated, she had been kept alive by Beryl since the Silver Millennium. She said that Serena was a threat to the princess…"

L

"I won't be here tomorrow, Miss Lanai," Serena said one day at the end of their session. "I have to go to the doctor."

Miss Lanai looked up sharply. "Are you ill?"

"Uh-uh!" Serena looked a little sheepish. "It's just…ever since the…" She lifted a calloused hand to her face, the scars. "The attack, you know? They want to check up on us – I mean – "

Miss Lanai wore a tense expression "He will be there with you?"

"No!" Serena was flushed. "We have different appointments now."

Miss Lanai relaxed – but only slightly. "You must be careful not to let them notice anything suspicious."

"I won't," Serena promised.

L

Haruka sat back, eyes alight. "So that's what she's been hiding from us telling us to stay away from her," she breathed to Michiru.

"So it appears." Michiru bit her lip intently.

"What?" said Rei. She looked back and forth between them. "Who's hiding what?"

Haruka sat forward again. "Here's how it's gonna be, Rei. We have a mission that you're going to help us with." She glanced at Michiru, who nodded slowly. "It has been entrusted to us by Sailor Pluto."

Rei's mouth opened. "There's a Sailor Plu – "

Haruka cut her off. "Yes, there's a Sailor Pluto. But what's important is that she doesn't want us to track down the princess yet. We do. You agree, of course?" Without waiting for a reply, she continued. "So you're going to help us with both of those missions – " Haruka bared her teeth suddenly. " – and let _us _take care of Sailor Moon."

L

"Mr. Shields." Darien heard the door open, and he removed his hand from the spot near his elbow where a nurse had drawn his blood. Thank God the Golden Crystal waited for his command to heal now, instead of immediately healing, or he would have been revealed. They would probably put it down to another side-effect of the youma attack, but Darien was hardly a risk-taker.

Nor did he recognize this voice. "Yes?" he said.

"Dr. Takeuchi's out with mono right now, so I've been taking her patients. I'm Dr. Tomoe. I'm holding out my hand for you to shake."

Darien champed down on his tongue, biting down the "I know" that wanted to snap from him, and found the man's hand with his own. It was cold and calloused, curiosity and eagerness rolling through him like a tide. Darien removed his hand as quickly as he could, grimacing internally. Dr. Takeuchi had never expressed anything but concern that he and Serena's youma aftereffects would cause lasting effects. She had been one of few. Most of the other doctors they had been examined by in the hospital and afterwards, in multiple supplementary check-ups like these monthly ones, had poked and prodded, measured and hypothesized, keenly interested in the effects a youma had made on humans. This Tomoe seemed to be another of them, and with a hidden agenda. Hoping to make a discovery to publish in a medical journal, no doubt. He wondered suddenly if Serena had already had her check-up. She had Darien both had Dr. Takeuchi, and before she stopped talking to him, they had gone together, waiting for each other in the waiting room as they each got checked up. If Serena had been examined by this curious man –

"So." He heard the rustling of paper as Tomoe turned pages on his clipboard. "You don't have any memories of the youma – "

"This is a check-up, Dr. Tomoe," Darien said sharply. "That question was already answered at an initial visit."

"I am checking to see if any of your memory has returned, Mr. Shields," returned the doctor calmly. The calmness irked Darien, like a fire that sputters in outrage when cool water is sprinkled upon it. "Have you any flashes or chunks of it return?"

He forced his voice to remain cordial. "No."

"Any phantom pains?"

"No."

"Nausea, dizziness, headaches, difficulty sleeping…?"  
Ha. If only he knew. "No. None at all."

"I see…" The pen scratched, scratched, scratched along the paper. Rather a lot for a simple no, in fact. But it had been several questions in one. Darien waited for more, keeping his hands flat on the crinkly paper of the check-up table.

"Well." The sound of standing. "I'm going to listen to your heartbeat now." Cold metal met Darien's skin on his chest. It was warmer than the doctor's hand, before, had been.

"Breathe," commanded the doctor. Darien inhaled carefully, and exhaled with just as much caution. This doctor would be looking for any irregularity, even as small as a couple lub-dups off. "Again."

"Good." The doctor moved back. Darien heard him taking his clipboard again. "Now, on your last check-up, Dr. Takeuchi had noted some small scars across your abdomen, but they seem to have healed very well. I can't even see them."

Darien remembered in a flash his last visit, right after Fiore had died, and he had forgotten to heal the circular marks left in his flesh by Fiore's attack. He had had to create a lie on the spot to tell Dr. Takeuchi. As soon as he got home he had healed them.

"Have they?" he said to Tomoe. "That's good."

"I'm going to take a look at your eyes, ears and nose now." More cold metal entered Darien's ear; the doctor continued to talk as he examined. "So you're in your last year of high school this year?"

Darien resisted the urge to flinch away from the coldness. "Yes."

"Where?"

"Azabu."

"Ah. Very good school, I've heard. I urged my daughter to take their entrance exam."

"That's nice."

"A good friend suggested private school instead. Look up and to the left for me, please."

Darien complied. He felt his eyes watering at the brightness of the light and wondered what that meant.

Apparently, it meant something, for Tomoe began to scribble furiously on his clipboard; Darien heard the rustle of paper. "Doctor?" he said.

"Say what you will about youma, Mr. Shields, but they have created something very extraordinary with your eyes," said Tomoe. Darien disliked the note of awe tinting his voice. You try walking around blind, then, you idiot, he thought.

"Dr. Takeuchi has told you that very, very faint outline of your pupil can be seen still?" Tomoe said.

"Yes."

"You see an ophthalmologist also?"

Darien shifted. "Yes." Those were the appointments he went to alone, without Serena. But after two initial visits, he had not scheduled a third as they had asked him to. If the Golden Crystal couldn't fix his eyes, nothing could. The doctors' visits were enough to keep eyes from looking at Serena and him suspiciously.

"I planned to be an ophthalmologist, originally," Tomoe informed him, and Darien relaxed at the shift in subject away from him. "I myself am blind in one eye, and I wished to help others in my shoes, to find a cure. Perhaps I still will, someday. Now, Mr. Shields, I am slightly concerned by your muscles mass."

Darien felt said muscles tense. Did he have muscular dystrophy? Perhaps from entering space – but it was only two days, at most three –

"It's very high," said Tomoe. "Muscles are heavier than other tissue, and your weight in nearly twice what males your height and age usually is."

Darien frowned. Well, yes, he leapt rooftops nightly. One tended to build up muscle that way. Best to steer Tomoe away from that, though. "I'm fat?" he said fatuously.

"No, no…" The doctor trailed off, scribbling on his clipboard and barely seemed to notice Darien. "Just irregular…"

Darien decided that this doctor's bedside manner left something to be desired. Telling a patient they were "irregular" was something even he, socially inept as he was, wouldn't do –

He jerked suddenly.

"Is something wrong?" asked Dr. Tomoe's voice. Darien barely heard him; something outside was…

There was a sudden scream, muffled by the closed door.

"What?" He heard Dr. Tomoe's murmur, then the sound of the door opening. "What is – !"

"I don't – I didn't – " A panicked voice, probably a nurse. "We told her that we'd found a tumor, and she did this – "

"Heart attack," came Tomoe's voice. "Call an ambulance and get me ice, 800 mg of aspirin, call Levitin in here – "

The crinkling of the paper below Darien as he shifted seemed very loud. He had the power…he could heal her... but if he was noticed, if they –

He clenched his fists. Then he slid off the bench and felt his way out of the room into the hallway.

"Get back, please, boy," a tense voice snapped at him. He ignored it –

Only to be shoved back into the room by an icy hand on his cold shoulder. "Back in," said Tomoe's voice. "They're taking care of her, don't worry."

Darien tensed, then allowed himself to be pushed back into the room. "Will she be alright?"

"Oh, yes. She was caught immediately; that greatly increases her chances." But Tomoe's words seemed shallow and absent, his grip on Darien's shoulder tightening. Darien frowned, tried to shrug it off subtly. Tomoe didn't take the hint, squeezing harder.

"Did you hear her?" he asked suddenly.

"What?" said Darien. He felt the suspicion and a strange eagerness swirling through the doctor via his hand. He wanted it _off_. He reached up and manually removed the doctor's cold fingers. "I didn't hear anything."

"…I see." The doctor retreated. "Okay, then, Darien, we're done. You seem in premium shape. Remember to schedule your next checkup in a month with the reception desk…"

Darien pulled his shirt back on and left the doctor's office, very carefully using his cane. His mind was filled with the heart attack woman, apprehension and conflict over what to do in times like those, for certainly they would occur again. What should he do…

L

The ring of condensation around Asanuma's drink had dried. The delicate tablecloth was white again instead of clear. He felt as though it were his life, and he had seen it soaked, then watched it dry up, wrinkling and turning blank white again.

Not really. That was just a little indulgence of his emo side. His life wasn't THAT bad. Sure, none of his friends were currently talking to one another, and Rei was AWOL, but he had weird mystical powers. What more could a guy ask for?

He sighed and answered his own question. _A lot_.

Suddenly, a tap on the table interrupted his thoughts. He looked up.

"Could I sit?" It was a smiling, tall, sandy-haired man in a tux. Asanuma noticed immediately his use of the word "could" instead of "may," but even if this dude wasn't a stuffed shirt like everyone else, he didn't feel like company.

"Sorry, it's occupied," he lied.

The man's smile grew wider. He had very white teeth. "No, it's not." He sat down. "You've been sitting here alone all afternoon."

"My dinner companion is a model and consequently, so skinny you can't see here. Now you're smushing her. Please move." Asanuma took a gulp of his punch and waited for his weirdness to out-awkward the man's rudeness.

Instead, he laughed. "Funny." He deftly swiped a glass from the tray of a passing waiter and drank. "What's a sunny sense of humor like yours doing in a dark corner like this?"

"Trying to escape lame pick-up lines like that one." Asanuma clenched his socked toes inside his shiny black shoes. _Why won't he leave? _"What's a blunt beefbrain like you doing here instead of groping a girl on the dance floor?"

"Ouch." Another smile from the man, another laugh. "I like you. I really do."

Asanuma gave up on the idea of the man leaving. On the contrary, he seemed to be making himself comfortable, sinking back in the chair and fixing his gaze upon the dance floor.

That did not mean he had to be sociable, however. Asanuma pushed away from the table and rose.

"You wouldn't have happened to know where Rei Hino was, would you?"

Asanuma froze. Slowly, he turned back around to face the man. He reappraised him with new eyes: tall, with sharp, dangerous eyes; pale and lean, almost delicately featured.

He made his voice aggressive. "Why would I?" he demanded. _Who is he? Is he from Rei's dad?_

"Well, you'd know that better than me, wouldn't you." It wasn't a question. The man swirled his drink around, moving his gaze from the dance floor to the champagne glass.

Asanuma licked his dry lips. "I haven't see her since she disappeared from her grandpa's temple." He paused, looked down at the floor. "Do you know anything?"

Silence answered him. He looked up –

The man was gone.

L

"Toki!"

Motoki looked up, bleary-eyed, from the cash register. It was ten-thirty at night; his parents had asked him to close up for them that night. He'd been too distracted by his homework to ask why, and now he was wishing he'd put up a little more resistance. He still needed to write an essay for literature when he got home…

"What are you doing here, Asanuma?" he said tiredly. "It's nearly eleven."

Asanuma did not seem to hear him. "Some bastard came up and asked me about Rei!"

Motoki realized that Asanuma wore a tux and bow tie, though the latter hung untied around his throat. He had been at one of his dad's diplomatic functions, then. "On the street?"

"No! At the dinner!" Asanuma pounded his fist on the counter. "First he tried to sit by me, then he asked if I knew where Rei was, then he disappeared! You know what that means, Toki! She's here – somewhere, she's gotta be here!"

"Or he was a journalist who found out you'd known her and wanted to see if you had any clue about where she'd run to." Motoki wasn't usually a wet blanket, but it was late, and furthermore, Asanuma had just finally weaned himself off the illusion that Rei would come back; he couldn't sink back into it now. "Please don't get your hopes up, Numa."

Asanuma's face changed. His dark brows drew together; he pushed away from the counter. For a second, Motoki felt sure he was going to ignite a fireball in his palm. But he balled his fists instead.

"Well, fine," he said. "Be a jerk, you fathead!" Then he stomped out the door.

"Fathead?" murmured Lita to Motoki as she passed him with an empty tray. Motoki sighed.

L

A few booths away, a woman with blue-tinted glasses propped atop her midnight black hair stared into the window. Night had fallen, and superimposed over the sight of the car headlights cruising by on the street outside was the reflection of all that happened in the bright, cheery arcade. This booth was especially well-positioned to watch the counter.

A small smile tilted the lips of the watching woman. She lifted a hand to raise her iced coffee to her lips.

"Do you see them?" she murmured.

"Excellently." The earpiece in her ear betrayed not a hint of static.

She lowered her drink but kept her hand propped negligently upon it.

After a brief silence, broken only by the nearly inaudible ticking of her wristwatch, she murmured without moving her lips, "Shall I move closer?"

A whoosh of breath. "No. No, this is sufficient for today. Proceed to the temple next, then contact me again. There is something else we need to ascertain."

"Yes." She lowered her hand and stood, leaving money on the table.

Lita, a few minutes later, wiping the table clean again, noticed that the half-empty iced coffee was nearly frozen. "No wonder she left so quick," she muttered to herself. "Who wants coffee that they have to thaw?" Motoki would have to talk to Lizzie again about the difference between 'iced' and 'frozen.'

L

Serena and Miss Lanai did not always train. Sometimes at lunch or during seventh period, Miss Lanai set a sketchbook before Serena and told her to draw. For when someone wanted to see what she was doing in Art class, Miss Lanai said. Which both Lita, Motoki in the rare occasions she saw him, Asanuma, and her parents had all done.

Serena had never considered herself an artist, but she had done her fair share of manga doodling/manga-ka-emulating in middle school. She dredged up those old skills and pasted them over the way of sketching first with circles and boxes that Miss Lanai had shown her.

The results pleased her. They certainly weren't anything notable aesthetic-wise, but looking at something that she'd created lit a candle of warmth inside her. It was soothing, too, to bend over the desk and float suspended in her little word of eraser smudges and too-big noses while Miss Lanai's pens scratched in the background. It was a little pocket of serenity in her life. She drew Lita in her arcade apron, Rei in her miko garbs, and Buji with his marshmallow hat. Sooner or later, all of Serena's acquaintances made appearances in her sketchbook. Only one person never appeared.

Sometimes Miss Lanai asked her to draw the other Senshi. She promised Serena that she would cast a spell over the sketchbook so that no one would be able to see the pictures of the girls in their fukus and reveal their identities. But she seemed dead set on Serena drawing the other Senshi, and when Serena finished her last, Sailor Venus, with her sad eyes and frowning lips, she told her to imagine what she thought the other Senshi, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune would look like.

One certain day, she finished a sketch of Sailor Neptune that she was rather proud of. She had drawn her hair full of body, wavy like the ocean – Serena loved mythology, and even if Ami used water she didn't see why her version of Sailor Neptune couldn't se water like her Roman counterpart, too – and even colored it, giving her absolutely unrealistically colored aqua hair. And Miss Lanai had stared at it for a long time when she showed it to her, and then she had called it "wonderful!" and given Serena a smile. In a woman as severe as Miss Lanai, this was a big deal, and Serena felt the glow of pride even into the next morning.

L

"Hey, Numa!" Serena greeted the blonde in P.E. that morning.

Asanuma withdrew his hand from his hair. "Hey, Serena. Aren't you chipper as a chipmunk this morning?"

"It's a very nice day," said Serena as a reply. "What's not to be happy about?"

Asanuma didn't really hear her reply. His mind was occupied in something, his sleep-deprived brain that had been working feverishly since that diplomatic dinner last night… Why was she so cheerful anyway, though, he thought, nettled. She'd been quite genuinely depressed and artificially cheerful the whole school year, without Darien…and now he felt irritation afresh, because there were two idiots who actually liked each other back, and they weren't together, and as a person whose feelings weren't returned, this got under his skin like a needle…

"Serena," he said pleasantly. "Who is this girl you think Darien's meant to be with?"

Serena's face shuttered for a moment. Her pupils dilated, then she smiled widely. "My, aren't we nosy as Pinocchio this morning?" she said back to him, mimicking his earlier joke. He found himself annoyed again. "I wonder if we're playing tennis today – "

"Stop sidestepping my questions, Sailor Moon."

Asanuma almost felt proud of the effect he produced in Serena. The color drained from her face, and her pupils dilated until her irises were almost gone. Then she said with a smile that was really a grimace, lips moving as though frostbitten, "What are you talking about, Numa?"

She really was a horrible liar. "May Serena and I be partners, Coach?" Asanuma called out without moving his eyes from Serena.

Coach Etoukou's reply was lost in the shock of what Serena did next. She grabbed him suddenly and hauled him with her behind the gym, where she slammed him – albeit gently – against the brick wall.

"Sheesh, Serena," muttered Asanuma, angered again. Stars had exploded behind his eyes and traced little crackly patterns across his vision as he blinked, then glared, at her.

"How did you know?" Serena's voice was low, her eyes serious and face guarded in an expression he had never seen on her before. It was more reminiscent of Darien than anyone else, and that irritated Asanuma even more. Especially because now he was second-guessing his decision to reveal that he knew her identity.

"Asanuma…" The grip she had on his shoulders tightened warningly. "How did you know?" she repeated.

Asanuma gave her a grin to loosen her grip; it didn't. "Alas, Serena-chan, it wasn't that hard to figure out. Especially after your hair grew a meter and Darien's eyes turned gold."

"And – "

"Rei is a Senshi, too, right?" Asanuma interrupted eagerly. He leaned forward, the better to read her expression, looming over her. "Rei, she's Sailor – "

"ITTO AND TSUKINO, SITTING IN A TREE, K-I-S-S – "

Serena spun around. The class had begun to troop down to the field, and now the majority of them were glancing toward her and Asanuma. The singer was Tonami.

"_I-TTO_!" Coach Etoukou nearly roared, face mottling purple. He stomped and yanked the two apart – for Serena had still been too frozen by shock to withdraw her hands from Asanuma's shoulders. "OFFICE! _NOW_!"

Asanuma shot Serena a grin. She stared back at him as he trotted off.

"I – I – I _never_," Coach spluttered. "You chose HIM over SHIELDS, Tsukino – "

Serena dug her fists into her temples. She'd need to talk to Lita. And then Lita would need to talk to you-know-who, who would then – she cringed just thinking about it. No, better not to say anything. At least not until she talked to Asanuma about it. And Motoki – did he know, too? She had to talk to Asanuma.

"There, there…"

Serena gradually became aware of a meaty hand patting her back.. She pulled herself back out of her thoughts and saw Coach, who was patting her on the back and had sent the rest of the kids down to the fields.

"It's okay, I'm sure Shields will still take you back…"

"Stop, Coach!" she was barely able to keep from snapping. What cosmic joke had been played on her, that she had ever had to meet Darien? Even if she could only have met him after he already knew the princess, then she never would have fallen for him in the first place –

_That's not true,_ her mind reminded her. _In the Silver Millennium he was already with the princess and you still _seduced _him_.

Serena cringed again.

L

Motoki was waiting to pounce on Asanuma when he walked into the classroom. "What were you DOING?" he hissed.

"Is the whole effing_ school_ infatuated with Darien?" was Asanuma's acidic reply. "Waishatsu gave me weekend detention for indecent activities – '_especially at a time when one of our, ah, students is overcoming such, ah, odds_,' he said!" Asanuma mimicked Principal Waishatsu's stutter with venom. "We weren't even doing anything!"

Motoki wilted in relief. He hadn't doubted Asanuma – not really – well, okay, maybe a little – but the rumors flying around school all during lunch… "You're going to have to face him, you know."

Asanuma snorted. "Like he listens to any of the gossip these kids spew." But he looked troubled. And halfway through class, he asked for a pass to the nurse's office.

L

As he walked out into the hallway after the bell ending the school day had rung, Darien was peripherally aware of the extra berth he received in the halls and of the hiss of whispers. The people who conversed in low voices could not have known that he heard them as clearly as if they had spoken into his ear.

"Do you think they're going out?"

"That's really mean if she did, after that stuff just happened – "

"It's been a whole summer, it's not like it was sudden – "

"I think they look cuter together anyway, they're both blonde – "

A gasp. "I think he heard you!"

L

Serena decided that she needed to talk to Asanuma immediately. "Miss Lanai, I can't stay after school today."

"Oh? Again? Another doctor's appointment?"

"No…" Serena hedged. Miss Lanai would not approve of a civilian knowing her identity, and she would tell her, she would, but she just had to get it sorted out first. Then she'd tell her. "There's something I have to do. I'll make up for it tomorrow. We can stay through dinner – "

"Is it something I should know about?" Miss Lanai propped her feet up on her desk.

"Oh, just civilian stuff," Serena said, wishing she didn't feel as though "LIAR" was stamped on her forehead. "Got to talk to someone about something."

"How informatively vague," said Miss Lanai, then dropped her feet to the floor and turned back to her desk. Serena took this as permission and walked quickly from the room.

She headed straight for the arcade, stomach ajumble. Walking this familiar path that had sewn every single day of her life, from the first day she entered high school to only a few months ago, together, filled her with a queer sensation. She felt as though the world had been split into two, the past and the present, and she walked with one foot in each. For a moment, she did not know which Serena she was, the Serena skipping to the arcade for an afternoon of milkshakes and gaming, or the Serena striding to the arcade to confront a friend about a life-threatening secret.

There was not the usual din of laughter, beeping video games, and gossip coming from the arcade, she noticed suddenly, arriving at the end of the block. Her pace sped into a run. She remembered vividly the day she had found Buji in a bloody heap outside, thrown by a youma…

The doors slid apart. A horrifying scene was revealed.

"_Darien_!" she screamed.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Numa, Numa, Numa…

Disclaimer: I own Buji, actually. I only just recently realized this. But Buji's my only real baby; the rest are adopted.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Seven: Shittenou

L

Serena shot forward, seizing Darien's arms and trying to yank him away from his death grip on Asanuma's throat. "Let go! Darien! _Stop_!"

His fists would not let go. They were like stone beneath her fingers – then, when she let out a miserable cry, his rigid fingers suddenly crumbled like shale.

Asanuma fell to the floor, but landed in a crouch, not on his butt. Serena, staring in uneasy anxiety up at a murderous Darien, barely noticed until a hand seized her skirt and hauled her backward. It was Asanuma's hand. Her eyes shot to the blond boy and saw his blue eyes aflame with a scary intensity, almost insane, that reminded her of Rei.

"Okay – " Lita shoved in, breaking Asanuma's grip on Serena, her eyes flashing. "Break it up – "

"Shut up, Lita." Asanuma didn't move his eyes from Darien.

Serena stared at him, pushing a stupefied Lita further behind her.

"I've got questions for you," Asanuma said fiercely. "Both of you."

He was like a different person. Fury toward him built up in her, scalding, boiling. She felt the urge to slap him and didn't even feel guilty about it.

She seized him by his ear instead, digging in with her nails. Then she dragged his head down to her height, and still he didn't move his eyes from Darien!

"Come here," she hissed, muscles bunching. She began to walk backward, catching him by the wrist and squeezing it as tight as she could. She looked anywhere but at Darien, anywhere but at anyone else; she focused on the door. And that was where she saw, in the doors' reflecting glass, Darien lunging forward.

In a move like lightning Serena had switched her and Asanuma's positions, throwing herself into his spot and him into hers. Her hand shot up and caught against her arms the fist that Darien had thrown forward. The impact made a loud, dull _thud_.

"_Stop_, I said." Serena kept both her voice and her arms steady. Then she saw in the mirror behind the counter their reflections, hers and Darien's, so close together, and she dropped her arms as though scalded. She took steps slowly backward, eyes fixed on his legs so that she would see any movement but not have to see his face. She kept going until she bumped into a chest.

"I said I had questions for both of you." Asanuma's hand was on her shoulder now, hot and squeezing.

"Let go of her."

Darien spoke for the first time since Serena had entered. It was the first time she had heard his voice since…finding out. She swallowed, almost forgetting the current situation. She heard his voice and wondered if it had sounded the same then, wondered if she had fallen for him the same way, gradually, or if she had been smarter then and seen it the very first time she spoke to him –

Loathing poured through her. She ducked from beneath Asanuma's shoulders and fled.

She heard footsteps pounding after her and shunted more power to her legs; there was no one, not even Darien, who could catch up with her when she didn't want to be caught, and she didn't want to be caught, she didn't –

Somehow they were already at the park, and she was tumbling hard, bones into leaf-covered stone and roots, into that hollow, and there were sounds following her into this place, their special secret place; she scrabbled to her feet and up out of the hollow but it was too late, they were crashing through the trees, now Asanuma fell heavily, Darien leapt down beside him with the soundless impact of a panther, Serena heard a shout and wasn't sure who it came from for Darien's fist was hauled back and Asanuma had half-risen, and suddenly Darien's hand was on fire –

As though a spell had been cast over the whole hollow, every person there froze still as statues. As though time had stopped.

Eternity passed. Measured only in the deafening beat of heartbeats and the crackle of the flame that danced around Asanuma's hand where it gripped Darien's fist.

"What the _fuck_." Lita was the first to speak. Her eyes stared at the two young men from where she stood on the rim of the hollow next to Motoki, three feet above the other.

Serena felt the blood retreating from the surface of her skin, rushing away. Her hand was at her brooch, her lungs tight and mouth dry to transform and interfere. Lita's hand, she saw with a flick of her eyes, was also in her pocket, ready to transform.

Motoki seemed to notice, too. He dropped from the rim of the hollow and ran to a still Asanuma and Darien, pushing them apart with one hand and throwing the other out toward Lita. "Stop! This isn't what it looks like!"

"Oh, Asanuma didn't just shoot fire out of his hand?" Lita snapped. She moved over to Serena. The gesture, reminding her of how weak everyone believed her to be, jarred Serena out of her stillness like a volleyball to the head; she moved away from Lita, toward the three boys.

"Look, we can explain," Motoki was saying, head going back and forth from Darien to the girls, as though trying to persuade both of them. He was using both hands now to try to push his two friends, who seemed to be having a who-can-crush-all-the-bones-in-the-other's-fingers-first competition.

"We?" Lita's voice was harder than Serena had ever heard it.

"_You_'re the ones."

Darien spoke at last, suddenly releasing his grip on Asanuma and twisting his hand swiftly from the blond's grip. He moved a step away, then another, from all of them, though his golden eyes stayed in their direction. "You've both got special powers, don't you?"

The blistering fury of his voice had been tempered by a note of realization and then resignation and something else. Serena, not allowing herself to look at him, had to read all that from his voice, and then she whipped her eyes suddenly to fire-eyed Asanuma and freckled Motoki. Realization cracked open within her. Were they the Shittenou that Helios had foreseen returning?

Lita still wore her pissed "someone better tell me what the hell's going on before I break something" look.

"The generals," Serena said softly to her, still looking at their two friends.

Lita's expression hardened like paper mache into a mask. "_Toki_?" she said.

Motoki forced his eyes up to her face. A rueful grin made a sickly flicker on his lips. "I guess we both had some secrets, huh, Leets?" But there was nothing amused in the laugh that left his lips. He turned back to Darien, leaving Lita still with that hard mask. "It started around Serena's birthday."

Serena, intent on what was happening, shot Lita a quick, concerned look, but Lita was not looking at her. Serena almost moved to touch her arm – then Asanuma suddenly moved.

It was just a jerk of his arm, which was still wreathed in orange flame. But suddenly everyone was stiff, muscles rigid and prepared, again. They all – except Darien – saw the look that he shot Motoki.

"Stop it, Numa," said Motoki tiredly. "It was stupid to keep it secret anyway."

"You mean the way they kept it from us?" Asanuma lashed out, voice edged.

"Oh, so now you're the victim?" snapped Lita. "Wah, wah, why don't you run off to wherever your bitch girlfriend ran to – "

"That's enough!" Serena's voice cracked like a whip. She even flinched a little at the sound of her own voice. Then she shot Lita, then Asanuma, venom-filled glares. "None of us asked for any of this – "

"He asked for this," said Darien softly, barely loud enough to hear, and smashed his fist into Asanuma with a force that sent the latter flying.

"Darien Shields!" With the same speed she had shown at the arcade, Serena blurred behind Asanuma, catching him before he could hit the wall behind him. She stumbled into it instead, back into the bricks.

"I'm fine!" Asanuma shouted, shoving out of her grasp. He wove a bit, then swiped a trickle of blood from his lip.

"STOP!" Serena shouted, for fire had begun to crackle in Asanuma's fist, and the tree roots all around them began to tremble and fight loose of the soil.

Serena was not sure what would have happened had not what happened next transpired. She was never so thankful to see Buji in her life as she was then.

"Onee-chan! Darien-baka!" The elementary schooler came trotting from between the trees, feet away from her, an action figure in his hands, and then stopped short. "Miina?"

Asanuma lowered his hand, which no longer flamed. The tree roots had fallen still. Serena reached for Buji with trembling hands and then balled them to keep herself from grabbing Buji into a hug.

But she could not help her voice from shaking like a tree in a storm as she greeted him. "Buji," she managed. "What are you doing, sweetheart?"

"I came to find leaves for a scavenger hunt. I need a red one," Buji informed her. He looked away from her, eyeing the rest of them, Asanuma and Darien especially. "What are you guys doing here?"

Serena invented wildly. Before she could gush out a lie, however, Asanuma's voice came from behind her.

"That's for us to know and you to find out, Buji, my boy," he said, voice returned to his usual teasing lilt. "Shall I help you find a red leaf?"

"We're not allowed to paint it," said Buji dubiously; he was familiar with Asanuma's methods of accomplishing things.

Asanuma's laugh was hearty. "C'mon!"

He strode past Serena and climbed with an easy swing of his leg up out of the hollow. Then he grabbed Buji's hand and trotted away with him, talking about last week's Naruto episode with youthful animation.

Which left Motoki, Lita, Darien, and Serena.

Motoki couldn't look at the rest of them. "He's probably embarrassed by what a git he's been." He cleared his throat. "I'll go…I'll go talk to him. Is there anything – we need to know? Or do?"

His eyes flicked to Serena and Lita. Serena shook her head at him and, silently, nodded her head toward Darien. She cleared her throat once. It took two tries before she could speak. "Prince Endymion will tell you."

L

"You felt it?"

Michiru nodded her head. "The fire one, I think."

Haruka let out a frustrated sigh. "That damned prince messes with the wind – "

Michiru nudged her. Haruka cut off, eyebrows lifting.

Michiru nodded her chin delicately in the direction of the window. Just visible without, in the slanting rays of the afternoon, was a jet-black head disappearing through the gate.

"What do you think?" said Michiru.

"Not on her agenda, she's not," growled Haruka, rising from the crouch and disappearing out of the house.

Only a few minutes passed before she returned, a spitting-mad Rei Hino in tow.

"Why, hello, Rei," said Michiru, setting aside her violin bow. "I didn't even realize you'd left, you were so quiet. Were you looking for the princess? Or – something else?"

"So you sensed it, then?" Rei wrenched out of Haruka's grip, her hair falling over one eye so that only one glared out, violet and spiteful. "Someone's using fire. _My_ fire – "

"It does not suit our plans for you to be seen yet," said Michiru. "Unless you prefer to compromise the princess's safety, of course…"

Rei glared. But she stomped upstairs to her bedroom.

L

"He really wasn't happy with you for calling him that," Lita said.

"It's what he is." Serena, fighting all the emotions within her, was far more successful in keeping her voice blank than she had expected.

Lita stuck her hands into her pockets.

"Don't you have to go back to the arcade?" Serena asked at last, as they rounded the corner to her street.

"Don't you have to get your schoolbag?" returned Lita.

Serena remembered – she had dropped her bag when she spotted Darien strangling Asanuma.

Lita was studying her. "I'll get it and bring it over for you."

"No – " Serena shook her head. "I'll come get it."

They turned around. The bright sunlight seemed very unsuited to the occasion. Serena wondered if the planet was expressing its happiness that two of its prince's guardians had been rediscovered.

She wondered if the prince and his guardians were as happy.

L

Asanuma walked into the art museum with the sun splashing happily down onto his sunglasses and the rim of his baseball cap. When he pushed the door open to leave half an hour later, fat gray clouds hung like potbellies from the sky.

It fit his mood, he decided grimly. The last week had been worth a pile of BS.

That painting by Miss Lanai that the museum had put in one of their galleries certainly had a lot more meaning now, though. He wondered if Miss Lanai had any inkling of the fact that Darien really was a prince. Had she noticed a royal sort of aura about him or just decided he was handsome?

Thinking about this just made Asanuma grumpier. He yanked down the bill of his cap, wishing that Motoki had just kept all that Darien had told him to himself. Yeah, so Darien was the reincarnated prince of earth, and he could heal stuff, and he had a magic crystal, and Asanuma and Motoki were really just his followers…whatever. Asanuma wasn't reincarnated anyone. He was himself.

He pulled down his cap again and made his way across the parking lot to his car. It needed a wash; it was about the same dull, gloomy gray as the sky, its shimmery silver coated in leftover pollen and dust.

"I've been neglecting you, haven't I, buddy?" Asanuma gave the steering wheel a rueful pat as he shifted into reverse and glanced out the rearview mirror. There was a group of college kids crossing behind his car… he kept his foot on the brake and fiddled with the radio channels. Then he blinked, his eyes flicking back to the mirror.

It was empty, only car bumpers stared back at him. He jerked around in his seat to peer out the window. The people were gone; a gleaming black sports car had its parking lights lit up.

Asanuma wrenched the gear back to park and clawed off his seatbelt, scrambling out of the car. His head collided with the roof of the car, and he stumbled, catching his foot on the car floor. He crashed heavily onto his hands on the asphalt, his knees stinging.

The black Viper peeled out of the parking space.

"Hey! WAIT!" he yelled, leaping to his feet.

With a throaty purr of the engine, the black car zoomed down the parking lot.

Asanuma cussed, throwing himself back into the car and wrenching out of the parking space, barely glancing at the rearview mirror. His Mustang tore out of the parking lot after its black prey.

"Damn it!" The light turned red just as the Viper rounded the corner. Asanuma gassed it, air hissing out through his clenched teeth, and gunned into the intersection, swerving past a white mini-van. In the back of his mind it registered that he had just committed a crime; a little closer to the front of his mind he realized with trembling fingers that he had been a centimeter away from killing someone; somewhere further up he hoped to dear, sweet God that there were no policemen around. He pushed all these things away and focused all his attention fiercely on the black Viper.

It changed lanes like something out of a movie, swerving in and out of cars. Asanuma let out another profanity and wove after it, inciting a chorus of horn honks and brake squealing. Asanuma could taste his heart in his mouth.

At last, the two cars had shaken free of the other cars and were speeding along the road unhindered. Now Asanuma was sure the driver of the black car knew that the silver Mustang behind him was tailing him; why else would a car drive ninety on a forty mph road?

Asanuma glimpsed the sign announcing the side road just before the black Viper let out a ear-piercing squeal of brakes and veered sharply onto it. Asanuma slammed down on his brakes and swore he felt his car go up on two wheels as it struggled to make the turn onto the side road after the black car.

His jaw clicked together as the wheels hit the road again, and he forced his trembling foot down on the gas again after the rapidly accelerating black Viper. He was losing his nerve, and he hated that. Darien the _Earth Prince_ wouldn't lose his nerve. Just because this driver seemed a little dangerous…

The radio announcer, who he had almost totally blocked out, announced the song just played had been sung a by a new artist name Crystal Something-or-Other –

Crystal. It echoed somewhere very deep in Asanuma's mind and jarred an idea from his brain.

Keeping one hand steadily gripping the steering wheel, he pressed the button to open the driver's side window. The wind of the car's velocity tore at his hair and face. His baseball cap went flying.

He forced his arm out of the window, clenching it into a fist. He tried to keep on the small, side road, and aim at the black car's back tire at the same time.

He felt the uncomfortable suction of the shard of crystal pushing from his palm. He pushed it harder, willing it to have enough momentum to go shooting toward the tire –

With a bone-shifting pop, the crystal burst from his hand. A grin spilled across Asanuma's face as the long shard went hurtling dead-on toward the car's tire.

Then something went wrong. A sudden humungous gust of wind whipped up, even stronger than the wind of his speed. Asanuma saw the crystal shard reverse direction. He had just enough time to slam on the brakes, wrench the car into park, and duck with his arm over his head before the windshield exploded in.

L

"That effing bastard!" Haruka was spitting, kept glancing back into the rearview mirror. "What the effing hell did he think he was effing doing – ?"

Rei, in the backseat, felt as though she was about to throw up. Not from the nauseating déjà vu caused by the painting they'd seen, not the Tokyo Drift car chase she'd just been part of, but because of the silver car that chased them. That had been Asanuma's car. Asanuma's.

"Haruka." Michiru laid her ever-soothing hand on Haruka's arm. She wore a tiny smile. "I think you enjoyed it just a bit."

Haruka's lips, too curved up in a little smirk. "Damned right I did."

Rei, in the backseat, had not enjoyed it one bit. Even if now she was pretty sure she knew who had been using her fire.

She dared not turn around to look out of the back window for fear that she would see his spirit peel away from his body and float up into the rainy sky.

L

"Mom!" Serena called as she ran down the stairs and toward the door. "I'm going to watch Buji! I'll be home for dinner!"

"Okay!" her mother yelled back over the din of the dryer.

Serena picked Buji up from the Iwaras' apartment, and then they headed for the park, swinging the picnic basket that Mayuko had packed for them before she left for her doctor's appointment.

"What was up with Asanuma-nii-san, nee-chan?" Buji wanted to know as they claimed a picnic table near the playground. "He just left all you guys."

"Well, we were done talking." Serena pulled out two juice pouches and held them out to him. "Open mine for me?"

Buji snorted and took them. "You're such a baby, nee-chan." He handed hers back to her, and they both took slurps. "Why did Darien-baka look so angry?"

Serena sighed. She should have known she couldn't get past the sharp elementary-schooler so easily. Yet there was a little note of something in his voice, not his usual brashness, but a tinge of worry, of fear.

She placed a hand on his bouncy curls and ruffled them through her fingers, trying to soothe him. "I think Darien-baka's just a little scared, Buji."

Buji looked up at her from beneath his curls. His dark eyebrows drew together; he glared. "Darien-baka doesn't get _scared_."

"Everybody gets scared, Buji-kun."

The dark brows unknit. But the brown eyes still stayed narrowed. "What is Darien-baka scared of?"  
"I think…" Serena's fingers paused in their stroking of Buji's curls. She had fought so hard to keep from thinking about Darien, and yet the words rose so effortlessly to her tongue. "I think he's afraid that too many things are changing because of who he is."

Buji shook off her fingers, climbing up on his knees to stare at her. "What do you mean, who he is? He's Darien!"

"Well…yes. But…ummm…" Serena struggled between not thinking about Darien and explaining what she innately understood. "Do you remember what you were like when you were in kindergarten, Buji?"

Buji wrinkled his nose. "That was _forever _ago."

Serena smiled. "But do you remember?"

Buji's grimace didn't lessen. "Yeah."

"Are you still like that now?"

"I dunno…I'm bigger," said Buji, forehead creased in thought. "I can kick the soccer ball farther."

"But…" Serena saw the stubbornness in Buji's expression and knew that she couldn't just say, 'oh, well, you'll understand when you're older.' "Do you have the same friends now that you had in kindergarten?"  
Buji's forehead furrowed again. "Some. Not all of them. Tai moved away. And Mizuki doesn't like Ninja Turtles anymore. And Umi likes _girls_."

Serena would have grinned if she did not feel so depressed by the way people changed. "So you guys don't really talk anymore, huh?"  
Buji's lips twisted down. "No…"

"That's what Darien's afraid of." It seemed the only explanation to Serena. "He's afraid that his friends like Asanuma are going to change, and then they won't talk anymore. I think. Does…that make sense?"

Buji hunkered down over to think about it, his eyes narrowing in concentration as he slurped thoughtfully from his juice. He nudged at some stones on the ground with his foot, frowning down at them.

At last, he looked up. "But then onee-chan, if Darien's afraid of his friends not talking to him, why won't you ever talk to him anymore?"

Serena should have seen that one coming from a mile away. But she hadn't. She compressed her lips, eyes stinging.

But before she could answer, Buji grabbed her hand.

"Sorry, nee-chan!" he cried, staring up at her with repentant brown eyes. "Let's not talk about it anymore. Talking to Darien-baka makes you sad."

A hot stream of tears escaped Serena's eyes before she could even think to blink them away. She looked away, swiping at them with her long sleeves.

"No, Buji." A fresh flood of hot tears spilled out. "_Not_ talking to Darien makes me sad."

L

When Asanuma woke up, it was raining. He was soaked and shivering, and water had pooled in his open mouth. He gagged as he regained consciousness and doubled over the steering wheel for a minute, coughing.

Finally, he blinked water from his eyelids and looked around. It wasn't nighttime dark, but it was dim. He could see his hand in front of his face but not much farther. A flash of lightning conveniently, though momentarily, fixed that.

The white light illuminated the gaping hole in his windshield and the spiderweb of cracks extending across its whole expanse.

"Shit," he said, eyes wide. He replayed the last few minutes of what he could remember before he blacked out. His crystal shard had been blown back at him; it must have gone through the windshield.

He moved his head and something cold and hard was against his neck. He froze, then glanced down, turning his head. The crystal shard had stabbed right through his headrest.

"Shit," he whispered again. He moved in his seat, and it squished wetly beneath him.

He had been _this close_ to dying.

He swiped the fresh coating of rain from his face and crawled into the backseat, which was drier, though smaller. In his cramped position, he fished in his wet back pocket for his cell phone.

_Thank you, God._ It was working fine, and it told him that an hour had passed: it was three o'clock. Asanuma started punching in a phone number, but his thumb slid all over. It was slippery.

A drop of liquid plopped down and landed on the phone screen. It wasn't clear. Asanuma frowned and touched his hand gingerly to his forehead. Warm liquid came away, and he inspected it in the light of the phone screen. Uh-oh.

He wiped his hand on the car seat and dialed Motoki's cell.

"Hey, this is Motoki, I'm not available at the moment, please leave your name and number so I can back to you."

Damn. The message that meant his phone was off. Asanuma pressed his sleeve over the bleeding gash in his forehead and sat for a few more minutes. Then he dialed Motoki's number again.

The same message answered him. He hung up and, nausea churning in his stomach, dialed a different number.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

Hazily, he thought of all those commercials where people got dropped calls and decided that first he would say where he was. Provided the bastard picked up his phone at all.

Ring.

Ring.

Come on! Pick up the damned phone!

Ring – "Hello."

"Darien!" Relief exploded inside Asanuma like a firecracker. "I'm on a side road off Highway 30!"

"Wow." Darien's voice was bland. "I'm so happy for you."

"No!" Asanuma glanced up as lightning flashed and thunder rumbled again. "Something – happened. Long and short of it is, my windshield's smashed and my head's bleeding. Oh, and there's a big crystal in my headrest." Was his speech a little slurred? Or was it just him?

He heard the background noise on Darien's end recede, as though Darien had moved away from people.

Darien's voice was lowered, but still managed to crackle with wrath, when he spoke next. "You idiot, were you drinking?"

"NO!" Asanuma shouted into the phone, and his head spun. He winced and grabbed it. "Damn. No – I thought I saw Rei."

He heard Darien's sound of disgust over the phone. "Damn it, Asanuma – "

"Look, chew me out later, okay?" Asanuma snapped. "I screwed up, I get it! But at least I called you instead of calling 911 first and getting us all found out!"

He heard Darien's snarl-sigh. "Take off your shirt."

Asanuma blanched, wondering if he had a concussion.

"Ball it up and put it against where your head's bleeding," continued Darien. "We'll be there soon."

Asanuma's phone made the noise for a call disconnecting. He sighed and snapped it shut, stowing it in his front pocket, then wriggled out of his t-shirt. He stuffed it between the corner of the backseat and the window and leaned his forehead against it. He inhaled a noseful of Old Spice and coughed.

"Man," he muttered to his car, "This blows."

L

When Asanuma woke up for the third time that day, he found his head in a lap and Motoki's face very close to his.

"Whoah," he said, a little murkily, "Hi, honey."

Motoki made a strange face – half horrified, half overjoyed. Then Asanuma found himself being hugged. "You're okay! Darien, he's okay!"

"I told you he would be," came Darien's dour voice from a distance away. "A little faith would be nice."

Asanuma pulled away from Motoki and sat up, feeling his head. "It's gone?"

"Would you two stop sounding so astonished?" Darien walked around the car into Asanuma's line of sight. "I didn't make up the whole being able to heal people thing just to sound cool."

Asanuma squinted up at Darien through the water in his eyes. It was still raining, though not pouring like before. "Thanks."

"You owe me an explanation," said Darien. He held up the huge crystal that had been lodged in Asanuma's headrest.

Asanuma grimaced. "Yeah…could we go somewhere dry first?"

Motoki glanced down at his watch. "I've really gotta get back," he said, sounding guilty. "I promised my dad I'd watch the arcade for him…"

Darien nodded. "Go ahead. Thanks for driving me."

"How are you gonna get back?" Motoki asked, looking at Asanuma's car.

"I've got someone coming," said Darien.

"Okay. Tell me what's up later, right?" Motoki looked back at Asanuma. "I'm glad you're okay, man."

"I know," said Asanuma, still a little giddy despite the fact that his head had been fixed up. Blood loss, he supposed. "I felt it in your embrace."

Motoki blushed under the water dripping down his face. "You fruit."

"You in-the-closet-fruit." Asanuma waved his hand toward Motoki's car. "Get going before your dad totally emasculates you."

Darien waited until Motoki's headlights had disappeared to fix his stony expression upon Asanuma.

"Warm and dry?" ventured Asanuma.

"You're the one who can use fire."

Asanuma sneezed. He caught the little fireball that had erupted from his mouth and held it in his palm, coaxing it a little higher with his breath. Still not dry, but warm.

"You thought you saw Rei."

Darien's voice had just the slightest emphasis on "thought." Asanuma tried to ignore the hackles it lifted on his neck. Darien had just saved his life, after all. Well, probably. Motoki had probably had to promise him his firstborn to persuade him do it – but still.

"Outside the art museum. I saw a girl with black hair and – you know, sometimes she had those violet highlights in her hair – " Asanuma stumbled, mumbling. "I thought it was her. I followed the car, and it was speeding like Ghost Rider or something. The driver knew – "

"There was a driver, or it was the black-haired girl?"

"No, there were like three of them or something. Rei can't drive, so it wasn't her."

"Rei couldn't drive last time you saw her," Darien corrected.

Asanuma smiled sourly. "Yeah. Anyway, the driver knew I was following him, and he didn't want me to catch him; he was driving insane. So I figured something HAD to be up. Then he, like, fishtailed all of a sudden onto this side road, and I KNEW he was hiding something. So I – " Asanuma winced. " – sent a crystal shard flying at his tire."

Darien's silence was ominous.

"But then this huge wind kicked up and the crystal hit _my_ window," Asanuma finished. "When I woke up, the other car was gone."

He looked up at Darien.

Darien sat down in the wet dirt across from Asanuma. His eyes were especially glow-y in the dimness of the rain.

Then the grumble of an engine peeled away from the background sound of the rain.

Asanuma turned and squinted into headlights. "Motoki?"

"Our ride," said Darien. He stood up.

Asanuma eyed him curiously, but Darien did not speak any more. Asanuma rose to his feet also, stuffing his cell phone a little further into his pocket.

"Fire out."

Asanuma's eyes bulged, and he hurriedly extinguished the ball clutched in his hand. "Thanks," he said, a little begrudgingly.

The tow truck that bowled through the muddy ground was bright red, as many tow trucks are, and had a name painted across the side that was too mud-daubed and the light too dim for Asanuma to read.

It pulled to a stop, sighing and sinking into the wet ground, and the door swung open. The person that jumped the considerable distance from the cab to the ground was considerably younger and less pot-bellied than Asanuma had expected. Brighter hair, too.

And even more surprisingly, he appeared to know Darien.

"Darien Shields!" The driver greeted, reaching into the cab and pulling out a baseball cap that he plopped on top of bright orange hair. "Long time no see."

"No kidding." Darien's voice was astonishingly not-cold.

Asanuma glanced at Darien, who was _smiling_, then back to the driver. He was young, maybe a little older than them, and had very defined arm muscles that were quite visible as he was wearing a white wifebeater that was quickly becoming plastered to him in the rain. A silver hoop pierced one of his eyebrows, and he wore earrings in both ears. Asanuma noticed these features after the man's hair color, which was an obviously-dyed orange that inspired a little jealousy in him. That was like Ichigo hair…

"Asanuma, this is Kentaro Mikai. Mikai, this is a friend of mine, Itto Asanuma."

Asanuma flicked his eyes hurriedly away from the spiky orange hair, but apparently Mikai caught him looking at it, for he flashed him a knowing grin. "A pleasure."

"Likewise," returned Asanuma, pushing a hand into his pocket and looking at Darien again. Who was this guy…?

Kentaro Mikai also moved his eyes back to Darien. "So that's what happened to your eyes, huh?"

Asanuma's jaw may have dropped at the man's nonchalant posing of this question. It dropped even further at Darien's unaffected reaction. He had expected frigidity, instead Darien smirked a little – albeit bitterly.

"Of course you would have found out about it."

Another grin crossed Mikai's face. He pushed some dripping hair from his face. "It wasn't difficult. You should hear what some of the bloggers are speculating about you."

"I'm sure it's intriguing and entirely realistic," Darien said.

"Yes, they're just painting you as a brainwashed corpse sent back by the youma to infect the entire human race." Mikai's teeth were white in his tan face. "Some think you're Jesus reincarnated. A couple even say they've seen a figure walking on the water in the park at night. The usual."

Had Asanuma not been watching Darien's face so closely, searching for some clue to why he seemed to close with this guy, he would have missed the millisecond blanche that drained Darien's face of color. It was so quickly covered that Asanuma might have thought he had imagined it – had he not already known about Darien's other abilities. Walking on water, huh…he squished down his irritation.

"And did you happen to participate in any of these chat room forums and say that you know me?" asked Darien with perfectly-coiffed joking wariness.

"Ahem." Asanuma felt it was time to speak up. "Hate to break up the friendly woman chat, but if anyone's noticed, it's raining and we're in the middle of nowhere."

"Off Highway Thirty," said both Darien and Mikai.

"I was _exaggerating_," said Asanuma, knowing he was sounding like a snappy little kid. But sheesh. This camaraderie was just too much. Why didn't they just hug and decide to watch Brokeback Mountain together, huh? "Can we tow the car now?"

"Sure. You guys go ahead and get in the cab, I'll get her hooked up." And, flexing his impressive biceps, Mikai went climbed up on the back of the two truck.

L

"And then Shields went with this guy to have some coffee, and Asanuma went home." Lita finished narrating the story of the boys' adventures the previous day to Serena and arched her brows. "Interesting, huh?"

Serena was paying very close attention to cleaning out her pencil bag, though her heart had stopped when Lita first began telling her about Asanuma's accident. "Poor Numa."

"Serves him right if he's acting so PMS-y," said Lita, stretching and looking at the clock. The bell would ring to start school soon. She said, carefully, "That's weird, though, Shields being sociable."

Serena didn't say anything for a minute. She was thinking of what she had tld Buji, about Darien being afraid of losing his friends. Perhaps she had not been right at all. Then, dragging her thoughts back to the present, she said, "So they're not going to train or anything?"

"Well, I told Toki if he wanted to, I would." Lita's voice still sounded a little odd; Serena immediately regretted asking.

"Are you mad at him?" she asked quietly.

Lita lowered her arms. She placed her elbows on the desktop. "I don't know."

"Motoki would never hurt you," Serena said, as honest as a Quaker.

Lita smiled, a little. "I know. It was just…" She shrugged. "I feel like if he really loved me, he would have told me." She paused, looking at Serena's carefully bland expression. "I know, I know, I should have been nicer to Asanuma since I feel the same way he does – "

Serena's lips curved up a little bit. "Yes," she said. "Maybe."

"What about you?" Lita propped her chin in a hand. "You, me, Toki, and Nuam if he wants to come, and we can all have some spars, you think?"

Serena zipped up her pencil bag. "Um – we'll have to see. There's another art contest coming up, and I actually think I might have a chance at this one – " Desperate, suddenly, to stop lying to Lita, for something she said to her to actually be the truth, she pulled out her sketchbook and flipped to the right page. "I drew a picture – it's just pretend – but it's supposed to be Sailor Neptune, see?"

Only at that instant did she remember that Miss Lanai had spelled the sketchbook so that people wouldn't be able to see the Senshi she drew within it, but Lita frowned and peered at the picture. "She looks familiar…" she mused. "But she's not wearing a fuku; how are people supposed to be a Senshi?"

"Um – it's a secret," Serena explained, a little confused but deciding that Miss Lanai's spell must make the drawings look like something else. "I, um, just pretend she's Neptune."

Lita looked up at Serena. "This art thing really makes you happy, doesn't it?" Her tone sounded a little suspicious, but hopeful and relieved also.

Serena returned her friend's gaze. Then she smiled and nodded. "Uh-huh!"

L

A few days later, Darien informed Asanuma that the repairs to his car were complete. Asanuma attempted, multiple times, to force the cost of the repairs from Darien so that he could write a check, but Darien rebuffed him with ever-increasing annoyance, so that they were both in a rather sour mood by the time they reached the garage.

"There were a couple dings and scratches on the front and back, too." Mikai led them to the front of the garage. "Have you a special affection for curbs, Mr. Itto?"

"I've been teaching a friend how to drive," said Asanuma shortly.

"Ah," said Darien from beside him. "When you first called to say your car was totaled, I'd assumed Serena was the responsible party."

Asanuma felt a little anger toward Darien for criticizing Serena in front of an outsider. "She learns really fast," he said. "All those driving games at the arcade have taught her a lot."

"Mmm," said Darien.

Asanuma kept going. "You're just jealous cause I'm teaching her instead of you."

Oops.

Mikai's eyebrows were lifted. Asanuma didn't dare look at Darien's house to see what his expression was.

"Apparently we're due for coffee," said Mikai at last. "Is this the same Serena from the attack?"

Asanuma cringed again.

Darien merely raised his eyebrows.

L

Along with coffee, Mikai ordered a plate of spaghetti and some breadsticks.

"Hang on," said Darien, holding up a hand as he heard the waitress's shoes turning to leave. He hadn't planned to eat, but since Asanuma had left, he didn't have any further obligations. Especially if he wanted to check that Mikai had not gotten too close to the truth in his internet sojourns. "If he's eating a whole meal, I'd like to order food as well."

"What would you like, sir?" An Osaka accent lent a little spice to the waitress's sweet voice.

Darien realized suddenly that the menu in his hand was useless. Damn, he hadn't been somewhere he didn't already know the menu by heart (the arcade) since – since before he could remember.

"I'd recommend the spaghetti, Darien," said Mikai's voice. "They put all sorts of seasoning on it."

"Yes – that please." Darien allowed the waitress to slip the menu from his fingers. He moved his hand to the warm mug of coffee in front of him. It took a while fighting its way up his throat and out from between his teeth, but at last a "Thanks" emerged.

"My fault for ordering food." He felt the tiny waft of air as Mikai shrugged.

"I'm starving. No lunch break today."

"Doesn't sound like you."

"We had a rush job." There was a tearing sound as Mikai opened some sugar packets to pour in the coffee. About fifteen, from the tearing sound. Then the quieter sound of creamer being opened. "Sugar?"

"No thanks, Madame," said Darien, taking a sip of his own black coffee.

"It was a sweet car, anyway," continued Mikai. "Nicer than your friend's, even, and we don't usually get ones those nice except when you bring your Mustang in. Speaking of, what'd you do with her? Sell her?"

"She's in a garage."

"You're not going to leave her there?" Mikai's voice held horror. Darien he held in little awe, but his car was a totally different story.

"I was planning to give her to someone…" Darien lowered his mug and leaned back, shrugging. "I don't know now. I'll…wait and see."

Asanuma at this point would have asked who he planned to give it to. Mikai didn't.

"Well, I'm always open to a Mustang."

"Another one, you mean." A smirk curved Darien's lips. "How much interest are you earning on that hydrogen engine patent you sold now?"

Mikai laughed. "Enough to buy a Monte Carlo," he said. "But seriously, man, I still don't get where you found out about that from!"

"Keep wondering," said Darien, taking another sip. "You planning to stay at that garage?"

Again, Mikai's shoulder shrugged, pushing air off them toward Darien. The faint scent of oil was tangy in his nose. "I dunno. Not forever. It's nice now, though. I like the guys."

"Oh?"

"Someone's humor has matured from a five year old's to a middle schooler's," said Mikai. "Speaking of…" The booth cushion exhaled as he sat back. "You're a senior now, huh?"

Darien grimaced.

"What?" said Mikai, perhaps at the expression on his face. "Not enough colleges clamoring on your day to beg you to attend?"

Ha ha. If only, thought Darien, thinking of Dr. Lydisae. The principal still hadn't forgiven him.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," he said instead. "Blind kids can't exactly take notes from the board."

"I take your point – ah! Dinner!"

Darien leaned back as something steaming was set under his nose.

"Here you are, sirs – can I get you anything else?"

"The dessert menu," said Mikai with a laugh. And a wink, if the giggle from the waitress was anything to go by.

"What color is your hair now again?"

"It is currently orange," said Mikai. "Mmmm…pass the cheese?"

Darien's hand found the round glass container and passed it with the phantom sound of cow mooing in his mind. "And girls still give you a second glance."

"Not girls, my friend. _Women_," Mikai corrected. "Genius at academics you may be, but you are still a novice in the ways of the world, I see."

"Someone like you calling me a genius is like the pope calling Satan religious." Darien wove his fork through the spaghetti, unearthing the hottest pockets so the steam could billow out. His face felt as though it was in a greenhouse.

"Such insecurity." Mikai was already chewing away.

For a few minutes, there was no talking. Not like at the arcade, where talking did not even stop for food – except in Serena's case. Darien choked and cleared his throat.

At last, Mikai set down his fork with a clink. "About school," he said. "How many credits do you still need to graduate?"

Darien finished chewing a particularly cheesy mouthful and swallowed. "None."

"Well, then, why're you going?" Mikai sounded surprised.

Darien thought of Serena, the fact that she was currently avoiding him, and wondered the same thing himself. But no.

"I don't have a genius invention to sell and cushion me for the rest of my life," he said by way of explanation instead. "Besides, I'm college-bound."

"Right, you're one of _them_." Mikai sighed. "And college poses the same problems as high school – though most everyone just tapes the professors anyway. You could do that."

"It's not so much the learning I'm worried about," said Darien. "I know I can handle that. It's the application – taking tests, for example. I can't have someone sit there and read every question to me."

"Although it would be a sweet situation if the someone was a hot chick," pointed out Mikai.

Darien thought of Serena and felt his neck turning red. He cleared his throat. "Then real life," he continued, ignoring Mikai's comment. "How does one examine patients if one can't see them?" He thought of the woman at the doctor's office. _I would be able to heal them automatically, but how would I explain how I knew what was wrong?_

"Is a physician really what you want to be?"

Mikai's question surprised Darien. It hadn't been the response he'd expected.

"Because – no offense – I've just never been able to reconcile the concept of a _physician_," Mikai stressed the word and paused, "and _you_. It just…doesn't purr for me."

"Disturbing use of car lingo," said Darien, giving himself a moment to absorb Mikai's words.

He'd decided to become a doctor because of his sparks. He could heal himself automatically; he'd thought there had to be a way to extend that to others. It seemed sort of like a responsibility, an obligation to find a way to do that. like when he was a kid on the soccer field and he could run faster than everyone else, it didn't seem fair, so he said he didn't want to play anymore to give other kids a fair chance. And now he had that way to heal other people, the Golden Crystal, and that just sort of sealed the deal. That was the only possible job of an obsolete prince, anyway.

"Okay," he said. "What _does_ fit your schema?"

"Oh, that wounds me, Shields. You know I don't subscribe to the cognitive perspective."

"You and Asanuma both," muttered Darien, recalling a conversation they'd had when Serena needed help with her Psychology course. "Come on, I don't have all night."

He felt Mikai shrug again. "Well…I don't know. Something I could picture you doing…you kick ass at video games."

"Something I don't know, please."

"You'd excel as a professional snob." Mikai laughed at his own joke, snapping a breadstick in two and handing one half to Darien. "Uh…" he snapped his fingers. "Got it. Assassin."

Darien nearly choked on the breadstick.

"No, really." Mikai leaned back. "It's all that fits. Quiet, deadly, cunning – "

"On the opposite spectrum from being a doctor?" suggested Darien. "No one even uses assassins any more – "

"Not true!"

Darien stirred his half-gone coffee. "Yeah, because of the conspiracy to harness Santa Claus's caribou for time travel, right?"

"What? No!" Then Mikai realized. "Oh, you're making fun of me. Just you watch, Mr. Snob, the internet's not all bunk. And neither is time travel – I have it on very good sources there was a distortion in the time field just a while ago. Several of them, in fact."

"Oh? And how do these good sources of yours detect distortions in this time field they've somehow discovered?"

"People have all sorts of inventions that the mainstream knows nothing about. In this case, it's military technology, very top secret, very classified."

"And you obtained this very classified information how?"

"If I told you, then I'd have to assassinate you."

Darien smiled bitterly. "Get in line."

L


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: Again, thank you to EVERYONE. Please thank jade-eye in your reviews, guys, she's a total gem. Like a lifesaver made out of emerald – or I suppose jade would be more appropriate?

Disclaimer: Don't own anything, not me.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Eight: Interrupted Orbits

L

"…has sunk her claws into – "

That was all Rei heard before Michiru and Haruka spun around, the latter slamming her hand over cell phone speaker. Haruka's eyes, afire, landed on Rei, and she frowned.

"Like I care about your gossip," said Rei before Haruka could accuse her of eavesdropping – which she hadn't been – and passing the two women and their cell phones on the table to go into the kitchen. "Get over yourselves." The door swung shut behind her.

She put water to boil for tea and took the tea bag from the cabinet. Haruka and Michiru had not given a second thought to the car – or its passenger – that they'd left wrecked on an out-of-the-way road. Rei had given about thirty thousand.

She drank the tea without waiting for it to cool, the scalding liquid boiling exquisitely in her throat. Perhaps he'd only been injured. It was very possible he hadn't died. It was just her being paranoid that made her so certain he was dead.

She gripped the teacup harder. The brown tea within began to bubble. She didn't care anyway. It wasn't as though he liked her. Therefore, it was idiotic of her to like him, and all those times at the functions, the person she'd been then, those weren't really her. She was a different person now; she was Sailor Mars, reincarnation born for the princess, nothing more.

But being Sailor Mars hadn't stopped her from poring through all the local newspaper for a week looking for news of an accident off Highway 30. Or from nearly throwing up in relief when she saw him walking down the street with Darien Shields a few days later.

But once the relief had faded, the dam that had held back her curiosity did, too. _How was he using fire?_

L

That day when Serena arrived at the start of seventh period for their usual until-dinner training session, Miss Lanai met her at the door.

"Not today," she said, closing the door behind her. "Let's go somewhere else, shall we? The park. You are quite fond of it, are you not?"

Serena had given up being surprised by the startling amount of information Miss Lanai knew about her. She was all too glad, too, to escape the stuffy confines of the classroom. She felt as though she had not been outside – really outside, not just walking down the sidewalk – in a lifetime. Save that day with everyone…

Miss Lanai looped her arm through Serena's as they exited the school gates – hidden, of course by Lanai's spells – or perhaps not, Serena realized by the way Lanai glanced around as though making sure there were no administrators about.

"I shall just say we're off for a field trip to draw lily pads if we are caught," Lanai confided. "I am not so handy with making the concealment spell mobile."

"Oh…" Serena nodded in empathy. It made her feel better to know that there were things Miss Lanai was less than proficient at also.

As they drew nearer to the park, Serena wondered if she should take Lanai to the hollow in the park that they had found with Buji over the summer – and in which they had discovered the identity of the new Shittenou. It was a shielded place, that people would hardly wander into…

Something decided her against it. Instead she let Miss Lanai lead her to the sunny soccer field, where no one had yet arrived, since school was not yet out.

The Senshi posing as a teacher seemed agitated. She ordered Serena to begin stretches to warm up, then watched her with compressed lips. Serena had a feeling she knew why.

Unlike Lita and Darien and Rei and Ami and even Asanuma, Serena had shown no significant improvement. Weeks had passed, yet all that had become stronger was her body; her attacks had not strengthened, nor had she discovered any new ones, being able to conjure them nonverbally aside. She felt herself that she was faster than she had been, and there were muscles in her arms and legs now that had not asserted their existence before, but these were not even drops in the bucket if she was to protect the princess from Chaos. Miss Lanai, as the weeks had passed, had begun to take on the stony expression of someone who has shelled out ten dollars for an expensive ice cream and then taken a lick of it only to find out that it was sour.

"Miss Lanai?" Serena ventured, holding her arm above her head for a county of twenty.

The woman's eyes snapped away from the lake. "Yes?"

"I…" Forcefulness. Strength. These were the things she needed to work on. Serena steeled herself. "Please tell me what I need to do better. I'm not as good as I should be. As I need to be."

She kept her eyes down but watched Miss Lanai from beneath her lashes. The older Senshi looked at her very closely; Serena abandoned her pretense of not looking.

"I am curious…but not concerned," said Miss Lanai at last. "You have improved much. What preys upon my mind is the question of why no new…attacks have manifested despite our training. No new phenomena have occurred, have they?"

Her eyes searched Serena's face with a falcon's gaze.

"N-no," said Serena, a blush of shame touching her cheeks. She gripped her hands together harder and stretched further, straining her legs as though she could punish a new attack out of them.

Lita had four different attacks; Venus had had myriads, as did Miss Lanai, and even Mars and Mercury had used attacks in front of Lita that Serena'd never seen them use before. Darien could stop whole comets. Serena and Serena alone had remained stagnant in her attacks, able only to use her tiara.

"I see." Miss Lanai's voice was a murmur. Then she straightened. "It is no cause for worry. Your current attacks are very useful – but perhaps it is time that I explained what I hinted to you before."

She lifted her paintbrush; knives hurtled toward Serena.

Serena dove to the ground, her heart nearly exploding out of her chest. "Miss Lanai!" she gasped in a squeak, looking all around them. "We're in the middle of – "

"My concealment spells work as well in wide-open spaces as in enclosed ones." Miss Lanai twirled the paintbrush in her hand; a fresh batch of knives, like a school of fish, hovered quivering eagerly in the air before her. "Transform."

Serena obeyed, breath bated as always in anticipation of sensing Darien. Yet, as always now, Sailor Moon felt nothing, only the backwash of her own anxious anticipation splashing back onto her. She fingered her now scarless cheeks and looked at Miss Lanai.

"Were I to send these at you right now – " Miss Lanai nodded at the quivering knives. "What would you do?"

"Duck."

"What _should_ you do?"

"Vaporize them. But why?"

"Because should you duck, the attack would merely continue to whomever is behind you. And as the bodyguard of the princess, that means that you ducking would accomplish the exact opposite of your whole purpose."

"If I took her with me, though." Sailor Moon thought involuntarily of all the times Tuxedo Mask had yanked her crashing with him to the ground out of the way of an attack and ignored the stab of wistfulness that came on the memory's heels. "Wouldn't that be okay?"

Miss Lanai swished her paintbrush through the air; the knives blurred, then reappeared in a cloud of knives four times the size that the original one had been. Miss Lanai now stood behind a veritable wall of floating knives.

"Dodging and ducking will do you little good against an enemy who sends whole walls of weaponry at you, and seldom will a serious enemy waste the time attacking you one-on-one. Beings fight dirty. You must be able to totally annihilate their attack, not just avoid it. To do that, you must be able to expel energy."

Sailor Moon fingered the fat center jewel of her tiara. "Like with this." She recalled the boulder that she had vaporized with a beam of light from her tiara.

"No."

Sailor Moon's face fell; she quickly smoothed it. "No?"

"All of your attacks thus far rely upon a medium. Have you noticed that?"

The wall of knives disappeared; Miss Lanai walked forward to hold a finger above Moon's tiara.

"Your original attack relied upon the tiara as a projectile weapon. Then that tiara changed to a different form but it remained your weapon, used both as a projectile and to emit light energy. Then you learned to bend the tiara to your will and use it as a staff, sword, etc."

Lanai waved a hand negligently, then held up the other and lifted four fingers. "Now, compare this to the other Senshi. Sailor Venus utilizes a chain for some of her attacks; like Jupiter, she preferred a level of physical force in her attacks to amplify their effects. Sailor Jupiter, at first, also relied on her tiara, like you, for her attacks; she used her tiara to conduct electricity. Now, however, she has progressed beyond that, and her lightning attacks emerge straight from her own body without having to enter the tiara. Sailor Mars," Two of her fingers had lowered; now she lowered another. "the only mediums for her power were the spell papers she used; otherwise, her fire also manifests from her own body without the aid of a medium. Sailor Mercury." Miss Lanai lowered her last finger slowly. "Had she learned any new attacks before she left?"

"Some, I think. I think Mina taught her," said Sailor Moon, wondering at the grim set of Miss Lanai's mouth. Had something happened to Ami? It had never occurred to her before that if Lanai had known who she was, she might also know where Ami and Rei had gone. "Why? Miss Lanai, is she okay? And Rei?"

Miss Lanai lifted an eyebrow. "Your guess is as good as mine. Those two are very good at hiding themselves. I merely wondered. At any rate, Mercury, so far as it is known, has never used a medium. Her attacks also issue from her body without a medium."

Moon forced herself to push the thought of Ami and Rei to the back of her mind. "But doesn't your body count as a medium? That's what they call the things that stuff like light and sound have to travel through, right? So the girls' bodies are their mediums."

"In a way, yes. But they are not considered true mediums in the way that 1 is not considered a prime number. All Senshi have bodies, 1 never has factors. Does that make sense?"

It didn't, really, but Sailor Moon nodded anyway, the same way she did in Algebra when the teacher asked if she had understood and she lied and said yes because she knew that the teacher was already annoyed at having to spend ten minutes explaining a simple problem to her.

Miss Lanai smiled tightly. "Our goal, then, is for you to learn to expel energy without needing to use a medium. Now."

That "now" was the only warning Moon received before a wall of knives hurtled at her. She planted her feet to the ground and tried wildly to expel energy to vaporize them, holding her hands out in front of her. But she had no clue what she was doing! She gritted her teeth –

She felt a prick on her nose. Then it stopped. She slitted an eye open.

The whole five dozen knives floated in the air in front of her, quivering centimeters away from her body.

"You must concentrate," came Miss Lanai's ringing voice from behind the wall. Sailor Moon could just not tear her eyes from the knives. She tried to swallow. "Picture power ripping forth from you, clean and silver – "

Moon managed to swallow, though her mouth still felt full of sawdust. "My power should be silver?" she croaked.

Miss Lanai did not speak at first, probably disgusted by her incompetence. Then she said, "Yes."

"I could do this…you know, in the Silver Millennium?" A little relief cheered her; that would mean that it least it had been done before…

Miss Lanai took a while to answer again. "Yes," she said finally. "You did this in the Silver Millennium."

L

Rei had been walking through the district, searching, since dawn that morning. In that time she had had seen seven ghosts, two future deaths, and a possession. She had discovered no hint of the princess _or_ the Messiah, only an increasing sense of failure.

A baseball cap hid her hair, and she wore long overalls in brown, her least favorite color, to keep from being recognized. Though she was in the shade of the willow trees that bowed over the path leading to the shrine, and she wore a tank top, but heat pulsed from every pore of her body. She felt fevered and delirious.

There was a miko sweeping the front. At least, Rei thought there was. It could have been a vision; that could have been a miko from decades ago, or one that would be here years from now, sweeping. But in her wallowing depression, Rei preferred to think that the girl was real and present, and that they'd already replaced she and her grandfather at this shrine. She wondered where he had gone, then pushed the thought away. He hadn't loved her, and she hadn't loved him. Like Asanuma. It didn't matter.

She grunted to herself and sank into a crouch, forehead pressed into her kneecaps. She was so hot. Sweat poured down her. She hadn't eaten since the day before yesterday, a stubborn, silent protest against Haruka and Michiru for not telling her what they planned for Serena. She didn't even know why she cared anymore. That girl was no longer part of her life. Rei _refused_ to let her be part of it. She had brought only pain to herself and to Ami…

Seeking a breath of cooler air to touch her skin, she swiveled her face to the side, leaving a slimy trail of sweat on her knee. A drop of perspiration raced from out of the thicket of her scalp and trickled into her eye, salty and stinging. She blinked rapidly, hissing and scrubbing at it. She fell back on her bottom, then squinted it open, the pain subsiding, and looked around experimentally.

Her eyes narrowed. A blue aura suffused one of the oak trees. A blue aura that…

When she spoke, her voice was raspy, like kindling, and uncertain. She'd never doubted her visions before. But why would she be _here_…?

She swallowed. "…Ami…?"

The blue mist blanched nearly white, then darkened and thickened, like cirrus cloud thickening into cumulonimbus. Then someone dropped out of the tree.

"Your sensitivity _has_ been elevated."

The air around Rei had suddenly dropped in temperature; she felt the sweat evaporating across her face; her breath puffed in the faintest white cloud from her mouth. She felt annoyed, chilled, and feverish still, and jealous and sad. She had not realized that she had actually missed the blue-haired introvert until she had thought just now that she had returned – and yet this being wasn't Ami.

"Mercury," she said.

The girl approaching her shook shoulder-length black hair from a clip, and as it fell, Rei saw – whether through Mercury's intention or Rei's spirituality – the glamour crumble away and leave her hair the dark watery blue it had been before.

"You were not supposed to notice me," the lithe girl remarked, lowering herself to the ground, cross-legged, beside Rei with incredible fluidity. "How have you occupied yourself this past summer, my fiery friend?"  
Rei was experiencing severe incongruities. The background behind her companion would not stay the same; it flickered from a garden of white flowers, to a star-spangled expanse of space, to the willow they sat beneath, to a landscape of huge crystals, to dark starless space…nor would her clothing remain the jeans and sweater it was, but flickered back and forth between several varying Senshi fukus and a blue gown…

"You still have not learned to control them, I see." A note of _something_ colored the voice.

Rei glared at the appraising eyes the blue-haired woman turned on her, her fingers pushing into her temples in vain. The girl's behavior uncovered, like a magnet drawing something buried from within the sand, an unrealized fear. A veil was removed from Rei's memory as she suddenly recalled struggles in her dreams, wrestling with an unidentified shadow who tried to melt her, who tried to melt _into_ her…

"What…did you do to Ami?" she gritted out.

"What have I done to Ami?" The blue-haired Mercury grinned. "That's like asking Cinderella what she did to Prince Charming's dance partner at the ball. I _am_ Ami."

"Ami…was not you," managed Rei, the effort of speaking growing more difficult. Not a single thing around her remained still and the same; the trees' leaves fell in clouds to the ground; the branches withered and fell, the trees disappeared, then seedlings, then growing, then trees again, then falling leaves again; the ground below her was water, then dust, now rock; Ami was a Senshi, then Ami in her school clothes, then the gown; Rei's hands were shrinking into pudgy little paws, then withered gnarls of veins and wrinkles…it was like standing in a strobe light.

Her brain could not keep up. Only the fear, the one that had been growing in her for months, remained, and Rei pulled herself, with effort, up it, like the ropes she had climbed in gym class. "You…swallowed her!"

This time the blue-haired person did not reply, just smiled blandly at Rei. Then she lifted a hand, laid it on Rei's cheek. It was cold as ice, cold as death. Rei slapped it away, breathing hard and glaring.

The blue-haired person stood. "You aren't ready yet, I see. But I do hope we'll be seeing each other soon, Mars. It won't – " She paused. "It _won't_ be long."

Then she walked away down the steps. "Oh – " She glanced back over her shoulder, eyes dancing. "Stop looking for the princess, 'kay?" She turned back again.

Rei forced her body intro transformation, and aimed a palm at the blunette's back, using her left hand to steady the right. "Mars Fire Mandala!" she whispered.

The flaming scimitars hurtled toward the relaxed back. Then – Rei blinked to wet her eyes from the intense dry heat of the fire – there were twelve scimitar-sized chunks of ice clattering to the sidewalk. And the blue-haired person was gone.

L

Haruka was sitting in front of the plasma screen when Rei unlocked the door and stepped inside. She lifted a light eyebrow at her and pressed the mute button.

Rei concentrated on calming her breathing as she steadily met the other woman's gaze. Inside, her mind was racing – that had been Ami, but not Ami Ami, Ami Mercury. How it had happened, why, was something she would tackle later; right now, what she was worried about was if Haruka and Michiru knew it, if this had been something they'd planned and carried out, some sort of trap. The thing in Ami's body had done the same thing, has cupped her cheek and smiled at her, the way Michiru had when they'd found her. Had the same thing happened to Haruka and Michiru; had their past incarnations taken them over, and now they were trying to do the same to Rei? They didn't flicker the way Mercury had, but they were good, they were trained, older and suspicious and untrusting; Rei didn't doubt that they could stop her from seeing if they wanted to – but then why would she have warned her to stop looking for the princess –

"You just going to stand there?" said Haruka at last. "What's got you all shaken up?"

"I saw someone die," supplied Rei as explanation. They knew it happened frequently. However, she was not usually so affected in front of them… "A kid."

"Hmph." Haruka turned back to the TV, turning the audio back on. "Tough luck."

Rei walked past her to the hallway. Scarcely had she reached the sparse bedroom, furnished only with a bed, a desk, a mirror, and a chair, then Michiru's call came from the kitchen. "Supper!"

Rei pushed off her mattress and ran a hand through her short hair, shaking the remaining clinging ice crystals from it. They spattered in a light sprinkle upon her shoulders, and she didn't feel hot anymore, nor feverish. But that was something little noticed in her agitation.

Michiru had just finished setting down the last plate and was settling herself gracefully into a chair when Rei came in.

"Rei," the wavy-haired woman greeted her, motioning to her chair. Rei took it. Michiru spread a cloth napkin gracefully over her lap though, Rei noted from the cartons on the table, they were eating Chinese takeout tonight. "Haruka says you seem a little bothered today?"

From beneath her bangs, Rei flicked a glance at Haruka, now serving fried rice onto her plate. A distant part of her mind noted that the question Michiru had just asked her seemed like something the real mother of a real teenage girl would ask. It positively revolted and unsettled Rei, how closely they had come to resemble a real family. Disgusting, really.

"I saw a kid die," Rei muttered into her plate, pushing away the steamed broccoli Haruka passed to her. "Okay? Can we drop it?"

Michiru folded her hands prettily beneath her chin and regarded Rei with an ocean-colored gaze. "What I am concerned about, Rei, is that you are so inundated by these visions of people you do not know, yet are unable to glean anything – anything – about our princess or the Messiah."

"Maybe she's already dead," said Rei, lashing out like prey backed into a corner. "Have you thought about that? I can't have any visions about her if she's already dead."

And suddenly, as though Rei had ignited a light to a pool of gasoline, the atmosphere around the table turned thick and sour, like curdled milk. Rei felt their gazes boring, stabbing into her, but stubbornly stabbed a fork into her fried rice and began to eat, shoveling it into her mouth as Serena had done so many times.

At last, Haruka's voice, deep and smoldering, branded the silence.

"Who are you?"

The question, so soon after she had just seen Ami, made Rei catch her breath. She inhaled a couple grains of rice. Her eyes tearing, she wheezed out, "Rei Hino. And YOU aren't my father."

"Your problem is that you don't know who you are." Haruka was leaning across the table now, her eyes inches from Rei. "You're Rei Hino? Bullshit. You're Mars. THAT'S who you are. Rei Hino's the human who would have lived in your body if your soul hadn't come along and taken it. _Not_ you. YOU are Mars. Got it?"

"Is that what we did?" Rei glared at Haruka. "Did we come and…_deprive_ the souls that were meant to live in these bodies of a chance to live?"

Haruka lowered herself back into her chair, looking disgusted. "What did you think we did? Reserved bodies for a thousand years in advance? There aren't spare bodies lying around in the universe! All bodies are meant for a soul, and we'd already had our bodies once."

Michiru interrupted here. "In essence, Rei," she said, "We are possessing these bodies. Like the demons that you were called upon to exorcise in your position as a miko. It is a horrible sin – "

"But one we're willing to shoulder for the princess," shoved in Haruka roughly, eyes slitted. "Are YOU, Mars?"

This one time, Rei could not meet the brash blonde's eyes. Feeling a sensation like acid bubbling and chewing away at her stomach, she averted her eyes and pushed back from the table. She left the house at a speed just below a run.

"God." Haruka spat. "I could throttle her – "

Michiru placed a hand on her arm. "I remember," she murmured, "Someone who also did not take such heavy news so well."

Haruka stared over her head, into space. "Well," she said, voice rough. She lowered her cheek down against Michiru's silky hair and squeezed her eyes shut.

L

"_If you will not concern yourself about the High Senshi for the princess's sake, then by all means, at least concern yourself about them for Serena's sake."_

Helios's icy words had not faded from Darien's memory. He returned to them every day, several times a day, wrapping his mind around them like his hand around knife blades so that his fury toward Helios would not be dulled. From mature resignation to his fate Darien had slid into fiery hatred of the beings that had forced him into that fate, and he saw Helios as one of those beings.

Yet with the discovery of two of the Shittenou's identities, there was no escaping a visit to Elysion. His steely self-discipline did not brook temper tantrums, only extremely bad moods.

When he arrived, Helios – kneeling amidst a bunch of tulips – lurched to his feet, wings snapping out.

Grim satisfaction stroked him. Helios_ should_ be frightened; he had no right to talk about Serena at all.

Darien put his hands into his pockets, regarding Helios. "I found the Shittenou."

The fair-haired priest licked his lips. His near-colorless eyes were wide. "Oh?" he said hoarsely.

"It was Asanuma and Motoki." Darien watched Helios's wings shudder, then lie flat against his back. "Asanuma can make crystals and use fire; Motoki's got electricity like Jupiter. What's _wrong_ with you?" The utter terror which Helios was showing had ceased to satisfy him; he now found himself annoyed.

"N-nothing, Endymion-sama," Helios stammered.

Darien clenched his jaw. "I'm _Darien_," he gritted out. "And nothing my foot, you're acting like I'm about to behead you."

Helios bowed at the waist, his hear falling over his eyes. "It was merely a prophecy, Your Highness." His whisper was barely audible. "It frightened me."

Darien waited. Then, when Helios spoke no more – "And this prophecy _said_…?"  
Helios lifted tortured eyes. "It is far in the future, Endymion-sama." His voice, now, was even less audible. "Forgive me. I may not tell you. Only – " His face crumpled, and he fell to his knees, hands fisting into Darien's slacks. "Please, Endymion-sama – please stay away from Sailor Moon!"

L

_"And you must go now – "_

_Flame exploded. Intense heat seared inches away from her ear. The acrid scent of singed cloth and hair punched into her nose. She coughed and blinked, eyes streaming in the dust and smoke._

_"Asanuma?" she screamed._

_Shouts and grunts exploded a few feet away in the impenetrable smoke. Ringing crashes of metal against crystal._

_"ASANUMA!" she screamed._

_Purple light suddenly stabbed through the grey smoke. It shot straight for her._

_An orange dragon erupted out of the dimness and hurtled after the purple light, swallowing it meter by meter –_

_She ducked, gripping the key in her hand so tightly it bit in and drew blood. The wall behind her exploded. Daylight streamed into the house; smoke streamed out. She blinked again through the plaster dust and saw what would have looked like an embrace in any other situation._

_"And what have we here?" The breath of a voice wafted across her neck. She scrambled to her feet; hands grabbed her –_

_There was a fleshy thudding sound. Something warm splashed onto her. The hands fell away._

_She scrambled away and saw the youma man, two sai buried hilt-deep in his skull. She swallowed back burning vomit. _

_"Asanuma," she whispered._

_"RUN!" His roar tore through the smoke._

_She was a smart girl who had never needed anything told to her twice. She wrestled the sai out of the bloody mass of head, and took off running. She scrambled over the wreckage of the front yard with the weapons clutched clumsily in her slippery hands._

_Another one of them leapt up out from behind the overturned mailbox, and she screamed, stabbing the sai out in front of her even as she tumbled backward._

_"Well, well…" His hand lifted her by her hair, tearing at her scalp._

_She yelled in impotent rage, still thrashing with the sai. _

_"I'll KILL you!" she screamed. Hatred was boiling in her brain, burning her eyes._

_The sai hit resistance. She felt warmth around her hand and pushed it harder, screwing her eyeballs shut._

_Freezing cold hit her skin, her hand the coldest of all. She opened her eyes and found darkness swirling all around her._

_She took a step back. Her hand resisted and she looked at it. It was stuck, frozen in ice to the sai buried in the chest of the man, whose head now lolled forward, his eyes staring sightlessly at her as ice crystals crept up his body._

_She screamed again, and tore at her hand. Tears began to squeeze, angry and scared and hot, from her eyes._

_"Great Serenity…" _

_She spun. Behind her, leaning heavily on a staff, was a lady in a Senshi fuku. It was too dark to see what color. She stared into her eyes._

_"You are…" The lady let out a sudden cry. Her staff emitted a white flash of light, once. "No!" _

_Balls of color swooped through the darkness. They disappeared._

_"We have to…we must…" The lady reached toward her. "You must leave here, princess…"_

_She stared at her, lips trembling. How did she know…? She scrambled backward, hand still stuck to the dead man, and squeezed the key hard, hoping to escape the woman in time –_

_The darkness changed to fog. Gray fog that curled and clung to her – to her hand? She looked, and her hand was free, still clutching the sai; the dead man was gone. _

_She rose shakily to her feet, clutching the sai tight. The fog was too thick to see through; the ground beneath her feet was powdery. She felt the back of her neck prickling and she broke into a run. A huge shadow loomed up suddenly before her, and then she was tumbling._

L


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: Humm humm hummm….

Disclaimer: Don't own anything, not me.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Nine: Darien's Decision

L

Serena progressed little in the power expulsion without a medium department. In fact, "little" was just a euphemism for "not at all." Several variations of the same result merely occurred: Lanai would stop the knives (or whatever projectiles she had decided on that day) just before they tore into Serena; Serena rolled out of the way at the last second; or Serena's tiara exploded in a "Twilight Flash" and vaporized all the projectiles before they could touch her. This latter only happened at the very end of their training sessions, when they were both tired and cranky (Serena on the inside, for of course she never acted disrespectfully toward Miss Lanai, to whom she was so grateful), and every time it happened Serena popped her eyes open, certain that she'd finally done it – only to be told by a tight-lipped Miss Lanai that her tiara had only gone off involuntarily again.

Serena began to dread training every day. It was like banging her head against a brick wall. She had not felt so hopeless even when she had first become a Senshi: then, even if her tiara attack had not been particularly strong or well-executed, she had defeated the monsters and saved the victims. Now, there was neither the satisfaction of success nor the warmth of knowing that she had saved someone's life. There was only the sour taste of failure and the dark room to go home to at night with only the next day's training for which to wake up.

The misery of training wormed it ways into her sleep; the harder she tried, the more spectacularly she seemed to fail, and the more frequently she had nightmares.

She dreamed of the fog again, and the awful taste of blood, voices screaming and arms reaching, grabbing. Each night, they grew stronger, clearer, like a stereo increasing in volume. Screams and explosions rocked her ears. She could smell flesh, charred and smoky, the acrid scent of pulverized rock, the salty odor of spilled blood, and the weight of all these things in her hair, dragging it down. She felt, separately and acutely, a bar of metal inside her, moving one way when she moved the other, like a gruesome parody of being pregnant and feeling a baby kick within her. Hands, fingernails, grabbed at her skin; something pulled at the sword, and she retched on her hands and knees, grabbing at it, but then it was pulled free, her spine jerking with it. Blood gushed forth from her like vomit, jerking her body with the force – and then, and then, the worst part, the worst part – the cold blade slid right back into her stomach again, like a sheath. More blood, more blood…and then, if she was lucky, she woke up.

At first she thought these hellish nightmares meant that Darien must have taken to camping in her tree again. Incongruously, she felt such a rush of relief and affection that it nearly erased the horror of the dreams – her whole dark world lit up for a whole day, because he still insisted on protecting her.

She knew it was wrong, she knew it was treacherous and evil, and for that reason, on the fourth night, she stayed up on her window seat to catch him and make him leave.

She wrestled all night, under the meager glow of the waning moon, with what to say, how to say it, without throwing herself into his arms and begging him to choose her instead. She tried to bribe herself, being logical, pointing out that once he left, she wouldn't dream these horrible dreams of mutilation anymore.

Yet it was all in vain. Because he didn't come.

She stayed up until one in the morning; she fell asleep into nightmares of cold metal jamming between her ribs, a tiny point of fire against her lungs as she began to exhale blood…and then she woke, blinking bloodshot eyes.

No. He must have come. Drunken with sleep loss, she staggered through the day, and she stayed up the next night, too, eyes burning and red, lips tight as Miss Lanai's. Then the sun came up and still he had not come. And realization spewed like a volcano upon her all over again. He didn't love her. The princess was more important. The universe was more important.

She, Serena, was a selfish witch.

L

Serena threw herself all the more into training, into trying to push out energy, and the nightmares intensified. She thought of them as she pushed and hissed and sweated and bled, and they screamed inside her like air from shellfish that are being boiled alive, and when she went to bed she barely closed her eyes before they erupted on the inside of her eyelids again, and it was just a positive feedback loop, everything feeding on everything else and getting bigger, bigger, bigger…

L

"It is an art show far away. In the United States. You shall not be able to reach me. Are you listening?"

Sailor Moon snapped her head up. Her awareness had blurred into a doze when Miss Lanai told her to stop trying to vaporize needles and sit down, her mind snatching for any crumbs of sleep it could get. She swiped a bit of saliva from the corner of her mouth with a wrist and tried to focus on Miss Lanai.

The Senshi was writing on the room's single white board with red Expo marker. "Cap those paints, please."

Sailor Moon's half-open eyes found the tubes of paint on the desk and her fingers fumbled them closed. "You're leaving?" Her voice was thick like a bramble of neglected bushes.

"Were you not listening? Yes. I would not, save for the fact that there have been no disturbances since Kisenian Blossom." She spoke quickly; Moon, forcing herself more awake, tried to follow. "There may also be Senshi there."

Moon's grip on the last paint tube tightened – red squirted onto her tennis shoe. She blinked down at it, then looked back up, eyes the most open they had been all week. "You mean _High Senshi_?"

Miss Lanai's cup of pencils fell over.

"What a pair we are today!" Lanai said, crouching to pick them up. "I believe some of your grace has rubbed off on me, Sailor Moon." She smiled distractedly, removing the sting from her words. "Why would you think that?"

"Well – " Sailor Moon tried to gather her thoughts, which had scattered to all corners of the globe in her detached state of the past week. "The Senshi are all in Japan, aren't they…because they come where the princess is." She rubbed her eyes. "Right?"

Lanai scrabbled under her desk for a rogue ballpoint. "Hypothetically," she said coolly. "But if the Senshi is a minor, made to move by her parents, or there for a short period, some other extreme circumstance…"

She trailed off, then stood. "My flight leaves in an hour. I must go. You - " She pinned Sailor Moon, who was mid-yawn, with a glare. "will be vigilant. Do not transform until I return. Do not speak to _him_."

Moon's pulse jumped. Her eyes prickled; her mouth turned hard.

Miss Lanai looked at her, seeming reluctant and awkward. "I am sorry, I had to say it. It is for your own good as well as the rest of the universe's, Serena Tsukino."

L

Serena went home that day and, desperate for any way to keep from falling asleep, fell upon the giant stack of homework that had been piling up steadily for weeks.

She made a dent about the same proportion as a shovel might have made in the snow on Mount Everest before succumbing to slumber and screams.

She woke up the next morning, her English translation glued to her face by drool and a crick in her back.

The rest of the day followed much the same mold, her classes inching by as slowly and unpleasantly as slugs. At last, she bade Lita a hopefully-cheerful-enough goodbye and was halfway down the hall before she realized that she had not thought to ask what she would do in seventh period while Lanai was gone. She decided to go to the classroom first, just in case someone was there, then go to Mrs. Kamiya and ask if she could leave early.

A surprise met her eyes went she reached the classroom. Someone was indeed there, someone with soft honey blonde hair.

Someone who resembled very much the Sailor Neptune she had drawn.

The blonde woman sat at the desk reading a book and glanced up when Serena walked in. Her soft waves of hair seemed alive and breathing, rippling like water.

"Hello," she said in an alto voice. "You must be Serena."

Serena took a step out of the doorway inside. "Yes. Are you Miss Lanai's substitute?"

What she really wanted to ask was, 'Did Miss Lanai _draw _you?' It had never occurred to her, but perhaps Miss Lanai could draw living beings, and it certainly seemed like something she would do to allow Serena to continue training while she was gone…yet Serena found herself acutely disturbed by the idea that Miss Lanai would create a being from her sketchbook. It seemed wrong, somehow.

The substitute/possible drawing answered Serena. "Yes. I was told you have an independent project to work on?" She nodded toward a manila folder on the corner of the desk.

"Um…yes." Serena moved toward the desk like a mouse inching around a cat and slid the folder just as carefully away from the desk.

"Would like some music while you work?" The teacher inquired as Serena moved to the couch to read the folder's contents.

"S-sure," said Serena.

The strains of string music that filled the room was not the type of music that Serena had expected; the woman hardly seemed old enough to be into classical music yet. But if she was a drawing…Serena pushed away again that sense of wrongness and opened the folder. Perhaps Miss Lanai had explained in here…

Or not. Within the folder lay a single sheet of paper, written in Miss Lanai's overly curly manuscript that looked like flower vines. _Draw a series of sketches of the prince, the princess, the palace, and the crystal._

For a moment, Serena traced the scrawl in pencil, fattening the letters and drawing shadows behind them.

"Do you understand the assignment?"

Serena looked up slowly. "Yes, sorry. It just took me a second to read her handwriting." She smiled.

The substitute smiled back. "Well, tell me if you have any questions."

Serena obediently pulled out her sketchbook and opened it. She was nearly halfway through the pages now. She gripped her pencil in her hand and stared at the blank page. In her mind's eye floated the image of the painting that Miss Lanai had done with Darien in armor and her in a gauzy gown – it kept bobbing back up to the surface of her thoughts like a beach ball that would not stay underwater.

She stroked the pencil down the page in imitation of the painting in her mind. But Darien never stood like that, or slung his arm so awkwardly. He didn't smirk like that, out into empty space, either, only down at her…

Forty minutes later the bell's ringing snapped her head up. She blinked dumbly at the substitute teacher snapping shut a slim silver cell phone and smiling at her.

"May I see what you've drawn?"

Serena's eyes flitted back down to her sketchbook, the smudged, detailed portrait of Darien in full body armor. She snapped the sketchbook shut.

"No!" she blurted out. Then, "I mean, it's not done."

"Ah. I see." The smile the teacher gave Serena seemed far too knowing – especially for a drawing. Serena couldn't help a blush. But it was an angry blush. She was stupid and idiotic to let herself think of him… She snatched up her bag and stalked from the classroom.

L

L 

During the time she spent drawing, a solid, determined idea had lodged itself firmly into Serena's mind. She would learn a new attack while Miss Lanai was gone. Then, when she returned, she would have something to be proud of in Serena.

Such an accomplishment would require a rigorous schedule, and a rigorous schedule required some lies. She went home first, to change and tell her parents she was staying with Lita overnight – it was a Friday, she had surmised from the calendar, so this would be okay.

It was in this way that five hours later, in the early dark of autumn, that Serena came to be in the hidden hollow in the park. She had waited until nearly everyone in the park had left, from laughing children to strolling couples, but now she stuffed her sandwich wrapper into her Sub-space pocket and withdrew her Luna Pen.

Asking the Luna Pen to turn her into Sailor Moon produced the same glamour and outfit but not the same powers and accelerated healing. However, it also did not produce the side affect of Darien sensing her. Serena had decided she would have to compromise with this until she came up with a better idea to transform without him knowing, and for now she would stick to physical exercises and trying to emit energy in this form. Lita could, after all, summon electricity without being transformed, and Asanuma had used fire, though of course he was a Shittenou and not a Senshi – why shouldn't Serena be able to use her power without transforming?

But first, exercises. Lanai had pounded into her again and again that she needed to learn backward flips, and Serena had thus far failed at them. Why not start there? Baby steps, baby steps, she told herself as discouragement and exhaustion sucked at her like quagmire.

Now wearing a Senshi fuku thanks to the Luna Pen, she moved to the very center of the leaf-carpeted clearing and bent her legs at the knees. Her toes flexed anxiously in her boots. Perspiration still dampened her choker, making the faux tiara on her forehead slippery.

She tensed her legs and pushed off.

When she came to, the glowing digital watch she had placed on the ground beside her showed it was twenty minutes later than it had been when she attempted the back flip. She ran a tentative hand through her hair, probing her scalp, and winced when it flared painfully. _That_ was going to be a big bump, especially without accelerated healing. Perhaps she ought to try something else…

No! Rage poured through her. It was weakness like this, lack of self-discipline like this, that had gotten the princess killed!

She yanked her body to its feet. And while she waited for her head to clear a little bit more, she practiced kicks.

Lita had taught her the basic mechanism of a proper kick. She'd told her it could only be perfected on practice, preferably on a real person, but all Serena had was a tree, so she used that instead. Kick, breathe, kick, breathe, kick, breathe, over and over again. When the colorful sparkles exploding behind her eyes every time her leg impacted the tree trunk were not quite so bright, she decided to try the backflip again. She had just turned, smiling a little as a cooling wind whipped up –

Then fire agony erupted down the back of her leg.

Serena let out a gasp. The wind carried it away as it vanished.

"Oh my god," Serena whispered to herself, slightly unnerved as she twisted around, hands probing gingerly at the long, bleeding cut down her thigh. Had that been a _leaf_ that cut her like that?

There was no warning again – the wind shot up, and another cut erupted, this time on Serena's torso. A hand shot over it, covering the quickly-spreading blood, and confusion and fear stampeded through her – was it a Shittenou, one that Darien didn't know about, there had been four after all and maybe they weren't all good, they'd let their guard down –

This time she heard the wind whistling up. In a blur, she transformed, and her tiara-sword shot up and out. Sailor Moon heard several things clang off of it in the darkness, though she could see nothing.

Perspiration rolled down her neck. She backed slowly toward a tree, eyes darting in the meager glow of the tiara-sword, one hand pressed over her abdomen. She was distracted by the flash of flavor she had received from Darien in that split-second window of transformation – panicked, infuriated, then coldly calculating and so startlingly resolute that her knees had ceased their tremors.

"Who is it?" she shouted, and her voice did not shake. But more because of the muffled awareness of her throbbing head than because she was confident. "Come out!"

Silence ticked by. Several times, Sailor Moon licked her lips and nearly called out again – then lost her nerve. She continued to stand, instead, sword held in front of her. Her heart seemed to pound as loud as a drum.

Then, suddenly, the wind whistled again. But this time it was different – it whooshed and snarled and roared. Something hissed through the air toward her sword –

But nothing ever hit. Sailor Moon waited with tensed muscles, but there was only a rustle in the leaves somewhere in front of her, and then a thud on the ground not a foot away from her.

She jerked backwards. Her back collided with solid tree, exploding stars in her still pyrotechnic eyes.

L

A snarl escaped Tuxedo Mask as he felt the interloper spirit itself away. The wind tore at his grip as he tried to yank it from out of the other's control. He hissed his fury, roots ripping free of the ground and lashing like whips at the intruder. Something slapped them down, not wind but something else, something that he could not sense because suddenly he felt that there was a great quantity of warm liquid seeped into the top layer of earth before him, and his mind snapped totally and wholly onto Sailor Moon.

He rose from his crouch reaching for her.

"What happened?" he demanded hoarsely, fingers closing around her shoulders. He could hear her heartbeat, rapid and frightened.

Then she pushed at him. "I'm fine."

Her voice sounded slightly panicked. His first thought was that she was lying to him, she was mortally wounded somewhere, but he did not feel blood gushing from anywhere on her body; the blood on the ground had cooled; her Senshi form was healing her – and then he realized she was trying to escape out of his arms, and he tightened them.

She froze, hands still stiffly at her sides. "Let go."

"No." Tuxedo Mask was surprised by the quietness of his own voice. It was barely more than a movement of his lips. He tried again.

"Tuxedo Mask." Her voice broke and crumbled like bricks. She pushed away from him again, swaying, her gloved hands tense against his shoulder. "You have to stay away from me, I'm a danger to the princess – "

She sounded almost hysterical. Rage poured through him. Helios, Luna, Rei – all these people who had poisoned her mind and convinced her that she was a killer, as if Serena would ever hurt even a _fly_, they didn't know her, none of them knew her, and here they had mutilated her, she believed _them_, if he'd known she'd been thinking about it all this time, but of course she had, how could she not, Serena agonized over other people's feelings and opinions and her own behavior, he could stab himself for not noticing, not _realizing _– his fingers clenched and spasmed as all around them wind roared and the ground shook –

"Serena." He pressed his face to her soft hair. Fury boiled through his bones. "_Serena_ – "

Her eyelashes were phantoms against his collarbone. She stammered something; distantly, he felt movement against his chest and a wet spot on his shirt heated by her breath.

The boiling began to subside; he became acutely aware of her soft hair against his cheek as she shook her head.

Darien pressed his face more tightly to that head. She wasn't pushing away this time though tears still trickled hot onto his skin; she was still as stone except for her heart, which pounded terribly. Her hands had risen and uncurled beneath his vest.

He spoke fiercely into her ear. "Serena, I _don't_ love the princess." He held onto her tighter as she stiffened. "I love – "

Thunder crashed. Then something cracked against his skull. Hard.

He staggered, and lost his grip on Sailor Moon as a heavy weight wedged them apart.

L


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: Hey, you guys. I just wanted to give you 2 heads-ups:

1!) a lot of people reading this story are coming in "Huh? What did I miss? I'm so lost!" There is a bridge story that goes between the first STC and this one; it's called the "Fiore Arc" and you can find it by going to jade-eye's profile. You're not going to understand Serena and Darien's situation or Numa and Toki's news powers unless you read the Fiore part.

2!) If you're a Rei/Numa fan, please please PLEASE go to jade-eye's profile and read "Tuxedo Numa and Sailor Sourpuss!" It's a ReiNuma one-shot I wrote when I just could not stand how angsty their story was getting and I wanted to give them some happiness. I'd really like to see you all think of the story.

ALSO! Bear hugs out to elianthos, midnight-nemesis, Lioness Amythest, and Renegade-452! You guys are LOVELY to leave reviews telling me how the writing was (especially elianthos (hearts!) and Renegade). I'm really trying to improve my writing, not just torture people with Dare/Sere angst (everything they do those choose to do, I swear, I try to tell them no), so advice and comments are BEGGED FOR!

Disclaimer: I only own Sailor Moon in my dreams. That's why Badiyanu and me are bosom buddies!

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Ten: Is That Your Blood?

L

_He spoke fiercely into her ear. "Serena, I don't love the princess." He held onto her tighter as she stiffened. "I love – "_

_Thunder crashed. Then something cracked against his skull. Hard._

_He staggered, and lost his grip on Sailor Moon as a heavy weight wedged them apart. _

L

Stars detonated behind Sailor Moon's eyeballs for the third time that night as a tennis shoe – leg and all – kicked her in the forehead. She gasped, wrenching backward, and thumped hard on her butt. Weight pressed down upon her chest, digging her brooch into very sensitive flesh. She gasped again, eyes watering.

Then, rolling over and fighting to her feet from beneath the mass, she blinked rapidly. For a full minute, she was totally blind as darkness and fireworks took turns wallpapering her vision. Then, as they cleared, a fresh pain solidified in her head, this one at the front.

"Ow," she breathed, eyes streaming. Then she blinked again, and saw what had landed on her (and kicked her in the face).

It was a little girl.

Sailor Moon's tiara-sword still lay in the leaves a foot away where she had dropped it when Tuxedo Mask had grabbed her. Its glow illuminated the clearing just enough to see that the child was no older than ten and very disheveled. Her jeans were tattered and dirty, her hair a bird's nest.

And she was scrambling to her feet and running from them.

Ignoring the agony in her skull, Sailor Moon seized Tuxedo Mask's arm and took off after her. She did not yell and she did not relate to Tuxedo Mask where or why they were going – she did not even realize that she had grabbed him until his gloved hand snaked down to grab her own. Then she flinched away – the memory of the past minute flooded into her.

_"Serena, I don't love the princess." His arms tightening around her. "I love – "_

Her feet pounded on the ground. Hot tears stung her eyes as unconsciously, her hand rose to cover her mouth. Horror filled her.

_"And just as Darien Shields is not, Endymion was not averse to your attentions…there is an aura about you, Serena Tsukino, that draws beings in. Witchlike, it may be called –"_

No. No, it wasn't true – Darien had been about to say someone else, something else –

Warm fingers touched her face, and she screamed.

"Serena!" Tuxedo Mask caught her as she went tumbling, and swung her up into his arms, still running after the child. "What's wrong?"

She scrambled, fought out of his hold until she landed ungracefully back onto her feet and hastened into a run again. "Nothing. Nothing!" Breathing hard, she fastened her gaze on the barely-visible silhouette of the child running through the darkness. She swallowed, keeping her eyes ahead. "Can you find me?"

"Always."

Biting back a cry, Sailor Moon blurred past him. _Focus on the girl. Focus on the girl. She just fell out of a tree in the middle of the night, dirty and alone and scared, you need to help her –_

A dark mass rose up before them – the rose maze. The tiny silhouette raced toward it. Sailor Moon pumped her legs harder.

She tore in front of the girl, skidding to a stop directly in her path, a few feet into the maze.

Either the girl did not notice that Sailor Moon had appeared in front of her or was unable to stop quickly enough. She collided face-first with Moon's stomach.

The breath was knocked from both of them in whooshes of air. The child bounced backward, glaring fiercely up at Sailor Moon. Moon straightened, lifting her tiara from her forehead for light and peering at the child's illuminated face.

A little gasp escaped her.

The glower on the child's face screamed familiarity. The narrowed eyes, the stiffened cheekbones, the ever-so-slightly down-turned lips – Moon traced them like dots in a dot-to-dot picture but could not figure out what the picture was. The child was hauntingly familiar, but why?

Without warning, the girl whirled.

Sailor Moon was faster. She shot in front of the child, blocking the maze entrance.

"Let me go!" The child's pupils were very wide. "I'll kill you! I've already killed one of you with these!"

She lifted her hands. There was something in them – _sai_, Moon thought, eyes widening as she recognized the weapons from Sammy's old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles videos.

"Wait," she said quickly, as gently as she could. "I'm not going to hurt you – "

There was a only a flash of warning as she felt Tuxedo Mask arrive at her side. Then a hedge of the maze shot out. It encased the girl's arms and legs. Roses, thorny-stemmed, curled slowly into existence, digging into her skin.

The child let out a gasp. Tears sprung to her eyes, bright in the light of the tiara.

Sailor Moon spun to Tuxedo Mask. "Stop it!"

"It's not human," Tuxedo Mask murmured to her.

Disbelief rolled over Moon. Her eyes flicked back to the child, who looked like a torture victim, her face screwed up against tears as the thorns dug into her bare arms. Then she spotted something else.

Suddenly at the girl's side without remembering moving there, Moon dropped to her knees. She tugged at the vines, lips compressed as she examined the dried dark gunk crusting the child's arm from the elbow down. Spots, darker, were visible where the thorns dug into the skin, making darker circles against the dried stuff.

"Is that blood?" she demanded, touching her gloved finger to the dried layer.

But she didn't need an answer. Sailor Moon had seen enough dried blood in her life to recognize it when she saw it. And if the child had said she had killed someone already –

Moon spun to Tuxedo Mask again. "I said STOP IT!"

The mass of vines receded, like string being rolled up. Moon noticed that the sai had fallen from the child's bleeding hands to the grass.

Moon ripped the bow from the back of her fuku and held it to the girl's wounds. She found her shadowed eyes. "Please, you need to answer me. Is that your blood?"

The child did not respond. Her eyes, wide, were fixed upon Tuxedo Mask behind them, her mouth slightly ajar.

Moon, too, turned to face him. "Come heal her _now_," she said, voice just barely quavering with the rage bottled up inside her. If there was something in the blood that caked the child's hands, AIDS or another disease that could now enter her blood through the cuts that the thorns had made…

Tuxedo Mask took a step toward them, slowly; she knew he was sensing to see if there was anyone around who might see.

"Now!" she snapped, ire growing. "If there was anyone here, you already showed them something wasn't normal when you made the maze grow!"

The golden crystal, when he pulled it from his subspace pocket, glowed like an ember in his gloved hand. In its light, Serena saw the tiny holes in the child's arms shrink into tiny dimples, then disappear altogether. At the same time, there was a gasp from the child.

"What is it?" Sailor Moon held the girl's cheek, searching for her eyes. "Does it hurt?"

But the child's eyes did not waver from the Golden Crystal, and Moon realized that of course most people weren't used to seeing such miracles.

Tuxedo Mask withdrew the crystal quickly, though, shoving it back into his pocket. Moon recalled what he had said – "_it's not human_" – but Darien wasn't the only one who could sense youma, and she did not sense anything reminiscent of youma from the child. Besides, the Golden Crystal would not have healed a youma. It would have burned them away. And – she inspected the child, holding her tiara higher – she did not look burned in any way. Just very, very dirty.

"What's your name, sweetheart?" Sailor Moon asked gently, trying to ignore the warmth radiating from Tuxedo Mask close beside her that was quickly eroding her wrath.

The girl's eyes flicked to her, narrowed. "What's _your _name?"

Moon blinked. "Um – Sailor Moon." She bowed, awkward in her crouched position. "Nice to meet you!"

When she looked back up, the child's brow was lifted à la Darien.

"And you?" she prompted.

"I don't talk to strangers." Still watching them warily, the child took a few slow steps back; then she picked up her sai from the grass.

"Drop those."

Sailor Moon stiffened. Tuxedo Mask's breath had stirred her hair when he spoke. She took a careful step away.

The child did not release the sai but lifted them higher.

"I said drop them," Mask repeated, also taking a step forward.

"Da – Tuxedo Mask," Moon said, warningly.

But Mask continued walking toward the girl, who took steps backward, eyes wide but flashing.

"Don't touch me," she said.

Tuxedo Mask reached out –

"He'll killyou if you hurt me!" She scrambled backward. A protruding root sent her thumping down on her bottom on the ground. She crabwalked backward on her hands, holding one of the sai out in front of her with a shaking hand. "Asanuma'll track you down and kill you – "

Tuxedo Mask and Sailor Moon both froze.

Mask recovered himself first. "Asanuma?"

"Yes!" The child had scrambled to her feet and held the weapons out in front of her in her small hands again. She seemed pleased by the reaction she had wrought in them; her eyes were bright in the darkness. "He'll burn you until you're just ashes – "

"Where the hell are you from?" Tuxedo Mask burst out.

Sailor Moon shot him a quelling glare, but he couldn't see it. She didn't dare punch him, so she clenched her fists instead and crouched down to the child's level.

"You know Asanuma?" she asked, making eye contact with the child. And furthermore – she knew about Asanuma's _powers_?

The waif frowned at her suspiciously, stepping back. "Do _you_?"

"We know an Asanuma Itto," said Sailor Moon carefully.

"Describe him," demanded the child.

"Um…" Sailor Moon struggled for words. How did you describe _Asanuma_? "Blond, curly hair, skinny…"

"Insane, irritating, fruity, dirty perverted moron."

The child's eyebrows unknit a little. Her frown grew a little uncertain as she looked at Tuxedo Mask. "What's his favorite food?"

"Like I care," snorted Mask.

"Pineapple crumble," said Moon. She watched the girl's eyes flicker uncertainly. "Sweetheart, I promise we won't hurt you. And I _promise_ we know Asanuma. Are you related to him?"

"Yes," said the girl immediately.

"And…what's your name?"

This time the child hesitated. "Rini."

"Rini? That's pretty." Sailor Moon smiled at her. "Why are you out here in the middle of the night, Rini? Where are your parents?"

The little girl's eyes flicked to the tiara that Sailor Moon still held in her hand, and to Tuxedo Mask, standing with his arms crossed, and then back to Sailor Moon. "I came to stay with Asanuma. Take me to him. Please," she added, as though it was an afterthought.

Sailor Moon glanced up at Tuxedo Mask, ignoring both the memory of before and Miss Lanai's voice warning her in her head. "Rini, Asanuma's not here this weekend. He had to go on a trip to America with his parents."

"With…his parents?" repeated Rini. Her forehead creased again – was she about to cry?

"Don't worry!" said Sailor Moon hastily. "It's okay!"

"Did Asanuma know you were coming?" asked Tuxedo Mask.

Rini shook her head. Her hand gripped something at her neck – a necklace pendant. "It was a surprise."

"And that blood on your arms – how'd that get there?" said Mask.

"From _your _roses," Rini said, glaring again.

"Very clever," he returned. "You know the blood I was talking about."

"Tuxedo Mask!" Moon seized his wrist. The little girl was alone and lost and no doubt scared. Couldn't he, a former orphan, at all identify with that? She hissed at him, "That is not the way to get information out of a little girl!"

"She's not a little girl," he said, in an equally low voice. "And you are not inviting her to stay with you – "

"Rini!" Sailor Moon spun back around before Tuxedo Mask could finish. "I've got an idea! I have a friend – her name's Serena. And she'd be really happy to let you stay with her until Asanuma gets back on Monday! Okay? Good! I'll go get her!"

Digging her heel into Mask's toe, she leapt away into the trees. She detransformed in a tree a couple hundred yards away and waited a few minutes before jumping back down to the ground and crashing her way through the leaves to the hollow. Tuxedo Mask and the little girl still stood where she'd left them, both with their arms crossed and glaring at each other.

"Hi!" Serena chirped. "Are you Rini? I'm Serena! Nice to meet you!"

Rini stared at her.

Serena's smile froze a little on her face; a little panicked, she glanced down at herself to make sure she wasn't still in her fuku – no, that was her school skirt – maybe there was something in her teeth?

The little girl lifted an eyebrow. "Is it Halloween?"

Now, too late, Serena recognized the expression on Rini's face. Shame heated her own cheeks, evaporating her smile to a sickly wisp. She touched the thick, ropy scar tissue on her face. "No," she said quietly, and saw the realization flicker across Rini's face, followed quickly by embarrassment. She changed the subject quickly. "So you know Asanuma? I'm friends with him, too. Oh!" She feigned surprise as Darien moved in the shadows. "Hello, Tuxedo Mask!"

She saw him run a hand down his face. "Hello, Serena. Where did Sailor Moon go?" It was a reminder, edged with the tone of _You're getting a scolding later._

"She…saw someone robbing a doughnut shop," Serena invented. "She had to go stop them. But she said to say hi." She held out a hand. "C'mon, Rini, let's go to my house now."

Rini looked at her but did not take her hand. Serena, smile faltering, let it fall back to her side. Then she began to walk, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure Rini followed.

"Wait a second."

Serena tensed, looking back at Tuxedo Mask.

He tilted his head down toward her. "Your parents aren't aware that Sailor Moon smuggled you out, are they, _Serena_?"

"Ah…" Serena faltered, and not only because she kept thinking – _"I don't love the princess. I love – "_ "Actually…" she said slowly, reluctantly. "They think I'm at Lita's."

"Then I'm taking you home." Tuxedo Mask stepped even closer, arms lifting.

Serena danced backward out of his reach. "We're fine, thank you!"

"And how do you expect to get inside without your parents knowing? You'll have to use a door, _Serena_."

His condescending attitude steamed her, especially since his soft voice, his warm breath, wouldn't get out of her head! Weren't sensory memories supposed to last only a fraction of a second? "I'm not an elephant! I know how to be quiet!"

"And in the _highly unlikely_ event that you trip over something – " Sarcasm soaked his voice, " – and your parents do catch you sneaking back into the house at night, do you really think they'll let you keep a street rat you picked up in the park?"

"I'll tell them the truth, then!" said Serena defiantly.

"Not with that blood all over her you won't," said Tuxedo Mask, and then Serena was suddenly in midair.

She stiffened to stone in his arms immediately. "Put. Me. Down," she said in a deadly whisper.

He ignored her. No, he didn't ignore her – he moved with such a sudden swiftness that she flailed and seized his vest to keep from falling.

"Y-you did that on purpose!" she sputtered. She hoped that he thought it was only rage making her stutter.

He didn't even pay attention; he had just grabbed Rini and deposited her in Serena's arms. Then they were sailing up into the tree branches.

"Just close your eyes," Serena told Rini, holding the child close.

Rini speared her with a glare. "I'm not scared!"

"O – okay," said Serena, unconsciously leaning backward

"Watch your manners," said Mask sharply to the girl, who glared even more fiercely.

The rest of the trip was a swamp of awkwardness. Rini glared at her, and she was already flushing from being held by Darien, and Miss Lanai's voice was booming over and over in her head. _Do not speak to him. Do not speak to him. Do not speak to him._

Relief was like a free fall in her stomach when they reached the tree outside her window. The second Mask's feet touched the branch, she lunged clumsily out of his arms.

"Ahem." He cleared his throat. "Serena, Sailor Moon may be able to jump from here to the window, but you can't. Remember?"

About to explode, a red-faced Serena backed back into Tuxedo Mask's arms.

He lifted them up again and leapt numbly to her window – which, Serena saw with a wince as he growled angrily in her ear, was open.

She slid down the window seat onto her messy floor. _Do not speak to him. Do not speak to him…_

Pain flared on her side.

"Ow!"

"You're suffocating me!" snapped Rini. "Let me down. I can stand by myself!"

Still smarting, Serena set her down. Resolutely, she turned back to the window sill with her fists clenched at her sides.

"Nice kid," said Tuxedo Mask. "Really. Come to the arcade tomorrow so we can find her parents and get rid of her."

"I'm quite capable of doing it myself, thank you," she hissed at him. "And _don't _spend the night in my tree."

She shut the window then, and locked it. Then she turned to face Rini, taking deep breaths to push the writhing mass of emotions out of her.

The child was staring around Serena's dark room with a faintly nauseated expression.

"Yeah…" Serena felt a mild embarrassment, but it was a nice, relaxing sort after the maelstrom of fury and pain and everything else she'd just been subjected to. "Not very clean, huh? I haven't been in here a lot lately…just to sleep…"

Miss Lanai's days of training suddenly seemed a lot further away than just yesterday. _I managed to break the only rule she left me in just one day_, Serena realized miserably.

"We should go to sleep."

Serena blinked at Rini. "Huh – oh. Um. Yes, sure…okay, you can have the bed…"

"That's okay. You take it." With no further adieu, Rini pushed clear a clean patch of floor and curled up.

"Well – well, at least take a blanket!" stammered Serena. She stripped her beloved bunny-and-moons blanket from her bed and settled it over Rini. "And a pillow!" She pulled one from her bed.

"I don't need it," said Rini flatly. Then she closed her eyes and shut her mouth tight, clearly not planning to speak anymore.

Serena stood there uncertainly for a moment, torn. She'd planned to…well, she wasn't sure what she'd planned. If the girl knew Asanuma…and she did, she knew his favorite food – AND the fact that he could use fire! But Darien had said she wasn't human…she hadn't sensed it herself…but Darien wouldn't say something like that for no reason…

Would he?

She'd barely seen hide or hair of Darien in the past few months. And the few times she had seen him, he had not seemed like the Darien she knew. Bubbling in rage so intense she could feel it on her skin, strangling Asanuma, punching Asanuma. He never ate lunch with the boys anymore, Lita had said.

Serena crept quietly atop the covers of her bed in her uniform. She pressed her face into the pillow. If Darien was changing – if Darien had changed –

But no. No, if Darien had changed, that was a _good _thing. He was becoming what he needed to be to protect and love the princess. And then the Darien that Serena had loved could just become a memory, and she would not have to worry about betraying the princess.

She told herself that this was very logical, very good, and completely reassuring.

But Serena did not have a logical heart. There was, in fact, barely a logical cell in her body.

That was why, despite her logical reassurances, Serena turned her head toward her closet and cried herself to sleep.

L

A/N: Please review this chapter, even if it's only a few sentences, before moving onto the next chapter. I really really need your input on how the story's going, guys. Do the characters' actions make sense? Or are they doing things that you do not believe fit with their personalities?


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter 11: The Runaway

L

Haruka hissed. "Damn it!"

"He couldn't do that before," Rei said.

Michiru tucked her hair behind her ears yet again as she touched antiseptic to the abrasions that darkened Haruka's legs like bruises. "This would heal faster if you were transformed," she murmured.

"He _knew_ the wind," Haruka said through gritted teeth. "I don't trust him not to use it to follow me here if I transform right now."

"Paranoid much?" muttered Rei.

"Call the kettle black much?" retorted Haruka. "Bitch."

"Shh, girls," scolded Michiru. "They didn't see you, though, Haruka?"

"I told you, he's blind," Rei said flatly. "He couldn't have seen her."

"You also told us you knew his powers," said Haruka. She held up a bruise-mottled arm. "You didn't tell us he could control _trees_."

"Now, Haruka," said Michiru. She leaned back, finished with the antiseptic. "Pluto warned us not to be overconfident."

Haruka snorted, pressing her face to her knee. She stared over it at the window. Michiru put away the first aid kit.

"I don't know what the hell she was doing," said Haruka against her leg. Her eyes slid over to Rei. "Just jumping around and kicking trees…" A snort escaped her. "She tried a backflip and knocked herself out. She was out cold for half an hour, then she got up and started at it again. What the hell's up with that?" She looked at Rei as though for an answer.

Rei looked away. It was a minute before she wrapped her arms around her legs and turned back to meet Haruka's gaze. "I told you she was an idiot."

L

Serena bolted up from her damp pillow. Salt drenched her mouth.

Panting hard, she stared into the dark mirror across the room from her bed. For a minute, panic seized her, something was wrong, she did not recognize her reflection – then she blinked. And her reflection was again her own, scarred and flushed with nightmares.

A hand going unconsciously to her midriff, Serena glanced down at the floor before reaching for her glass of water –

Her eyes swung back to the floor. More precisely, to the clean patch of floor that no longer housed Asanuma's cousin.

She scrambled from her bed, banging both knees on the bedpost. "Rini?" she whispered. "Rini!"

Of course there was no answer.

Serena ran to the window and wrenched open the curtains. Rather than grabbing the branch where Tuxedo Mask was now crouched, asleep, she simply dropped straight to the ground from her window. Served him right for staying here when she TOLD him not to…

Still, some of that fruit juice he used to carry around his Subspace pocket for her would be nice right now to rinse the blood taste from her mouth.

Five blocks from her house with no sign of Asanuma's cousin, she realized that maybe she should have woken Darien. He probably would have been able to tell where Rini had gone just by asking a tree.

But the little girl couldn't have gotten far. According to Serena's alarm clock, only about an hour had passed since they had arrived in her room, and Serena hadn't fallen asleep until at least twenty minutes later…why had she left, anyway? If she was with Asanuma's friends, and a Sailor Senshi had vouched for her – but she had been frightened by Serena's scars, perhaps she had been so repulsed by them that she wanted to leave –

"Stop it!" She yelled at herself. Miss Lanai would be disgusted if she saw her running around like this, a chicken with her head cut off. Calm down. Think. Listen.

She forced her eyelids shut and let the throbbing red behind them fade into darkness. An itch on her scalp reminded her that she'd had a severe head injury only a few hours ago – she freaked out for a split second, then calmed herself. It had nearly healed while she was in Senshi form before. Only a bit of a scab remained now.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Breathe…

Her eyes snapped open. She spun around and began running back the way she had come, running at her I'm-gonna-be-late-AGAIN speed.

Within a minute, she heard the unmistakable sound of shoes slapping the pavement. She slowed to a quick walk and followed the sound, peeking around a street wall when it stopped.

Only then did she realize that she had run straight into Asanuma's neighborhood.

Rini stood at the front gate to Asanuma's rather palatial three-story house. One small, blood-encrusted hand pressed against the brick wall.

Serena came up behind her. Her panic had been replaced by a relief that now melted into a need to know why the girl had run. "Rini – "

The little girl wheeled around. A punch sank into Serena's stomach – not too painful, definitely not as strong as one of Lita's, but enough to push a whoosh of air out of her lungs.

Rini backpedaled, staring at her. Serena blinked and did likewise.

"Oops," she said, a little hoarsely. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have sneaked up on you like that, huh?"

Rini just glared at her. "How did you find me?"

"I followed the trail of bread crumbs you left," Serena deflected, smiling. "Why did you run?"

Again, Rini glowered at her instead of speaking.

Serena opened her mouth – to say what, she wasn't quite sure. But before any words could leave her tongue, a huge clap of thunder shook the air.

Serena crouched immediately, hands flying over her head.

Only as the boom faded away did she realize – _oh my God!_ She hadn't tried to protect Rini! A nauseating wave of shame swept through her. Especially since Rini seemed to look as petrified by thunder as she was. Still crouched to the sidewalk, Serena could see the widening of Rini's eyes until her irises were surrounded by a rim of white.

"I – it's j-just t-t-thunder, R-rini."

Rini didn't answer her. Realizing that her statement probably didn't sound very reassuring coming from a girl whose teeth were chattering, Serena set her jaw and forced herself up to her full height.

Lightning flashed, eliciting another flinch from Serena. She grabbed Rini, expecting another flash of thunder that never came.

Instead, the weird barrage of light continued, like a strobe light, freezing the world in front of their faces in panes of white, blue, red, and green. Definitely not normal. Serena's teeth clenched as she thought back to Darien's warning, for the second time that night. _The Shittenou are back…_ She still didn't know where those strange attacks in the park had come from; was the same person causing this lightning?

"Rini!" Serena blindly found the child's hand and grasped it. "We're going home, okay? Run as fast as you can, okay?"

She didn't wait for a reply but began running herself, the child's hand gripped in hers so tightly that Rini wouldn't have any chance but to move. They pounded down the sidewalk as though stuck in a nightmare.

Flashes of light flooded the street, then left them pitch black. The abrupt transitions from pure darkness to blinding light overloaded Serena's brain. She found herself running straight one second, and then after a flash of darkness found herself running into a telephone pole. She veered and then found herself swaying to one side. She ran that way, tipsily, weaving like a drunkard.

The darkness and lighting should have been accompanied with the rumbling of thunder and splashing of rain on the pavement. Instead, only their feet made slapping sounds on the concrete.

Then, in that semi-silence, Serena heard another sound. A sound from behind them, like steam hissing from a kettle. Her heart pulsed in her mouth. She dragged Rini faster, nearly pulling the child through mid-air. Her befuddled eyes skittered about for somewhere to hide the little girl.

She had just spotted a huge delivery truck a block ahead when the steaming shrill from behind them shot up an octave. Then it exploded in a hiss.

"I've found you, brat!"

Serena spun, swinging Rini behind her.

It was a youma, it could only be a youma, for what else issued like a genie from a lamp that floated in midair? It had flashing red eyes that still glowed even in the flashes of pitch-blackness, and no legs. Just the wisp issuing from the lamp that _clank_-_clank_-_clank_ed sinisterly closer as the youma grinned at them.

"Who sent you?" Serena demanded, fist clenched. Her hand gripped her brooch…

The genie tilted its head at her. Serena felt sweat trickle down her neck, in premonition of what that thoughtful gaze meant –

Then the lightning flashed again into blackness. Only the red eyes glowed through it.

There was a snap and flutter, a familiar sound to Serena's ears. When green light flooded the street again, she saw a familiar black silhouette between herself and the youma.

Serena pressed Rini further behind her. Her hand spasmed at her brooch – to transform and dust the youma, to show him she could handle it!

Barely was there time for even this eager desire to throb through her before the youma let loose with an ululating scream. Barely was there time for this sound to split the air before Tuxedo Mask's cane-blade buried itself in her throat.

The shriek stopped in a gurgle.

"Who are you from?" Mask demanded, blurring forward so his hand hovered around her throat.

The youma hacked and spat. Then it crumbled into powder.

Tuxedo Mask spun then, and, in between the flash of blackness that followed and the next splashing of red light, had seized Serena by the shoulders.

Dimly, she realized, a heavy rain had begun to pour – at last, the sound to go with the lightning.

Except that the lightning had stopped.

"What the hell were you doing?"

Mask's fingers dug into her like nails. She still felt woozy with all the light and darkness, but she felt his fingers biting into her flesh, and Rini's hand sweaty and soft in her one hand, and her brooch cold and hard in the other. One reminded her of how much danger she'd put this girl in, and nearly knocked the breath from her. The other, cold and confident, told her that she could have handled that youma.

She dropped her hand from the brooch and pried Tuxedo Mask's fingers from her shoulders – or rather, she tried. He would not let go.

"Answer me!" His fingers tightened.

"Stop – " She pushed at his gloved fingers.

"I was sitting ten feet away from you in the goddamned tree, Serena! What's your excuse this time? Are you _trying _to die?"

Serena shoved his fingers again, this time not caring if she bent them too far backwards. "_Stop_, Tuxedo Mask – "

He shook her, hard. "Are you TRYING to die?" He released her, at last, and stepped back. His mask hid his eyes from her, but his voice crackled with rage. "That's all good for you, Serena, but what about her?" He jerked his head at Rini, behind her. "You're letting your pride risk her life?"

This hurt. It _hurt_. He had found her weak spot – no, he _knew_ her weak spot. It bit into her like a reflex hammer hitting a knee. Serena's voice lashed out like a kick. "I wasn't the one digging rose thorns into her arms!"

Tuxedo Mask was speechless with rage. His hands had seized her again, tearing her grip from Rini, lifting her from the sidewalk, eyes burning into her.

She kept her muscles rigid in his grip, tensing and not softening. In her fierce concentration she did not even notice that they were practically in an embrace. She would never melt to him…

"Let her go!"

Rini's voice, unexpected, seemed to break a spell. Tuxedo Mask's hands unvised; Serena slid back down, her feet touching the ground. They were still too close, her rain-soaked bangs at his dripping chin. She bit her lip and averted her eyes, using her hands to loose Tuxedo's fingers from her arms.

"It's late," she said wearily, turning. "Or early. We need to get home, Rini."

"If you think you're leaving my sight after that, you're less intelligent than even Rei ever thought." Tuxedo Mask stepped into her way.

"_Tuxedo Mask_." Serena's hands fluttered forward to grab a handful of his vest and pound her head against his chest.

Her hands wavered to a stop just in time, and she clenched them in front of her. She opened them, all the way, feeling the cold rain trickling into the crevices of her palm. She tried to make her voice harsh and belligerent, like Lita's. "We've already had this conversation."

His face was white around his lips. "I'm not leaving you alone."

Serena's lips, too, compressed. She stepped carefully closer to him – not too close – and spoke in a low voice. "After Rini's seen all this? Or are you going to walk down the street in full tuxedo?"

"Like I give a damn."

"Like you mean that." Serena's returning scoff was hollow, though. She was still too close to him. She felt the heat radiating from his chest, the rain dripping from his hair onto her face; his breathing was quick and shallow as though he'd overexerted himself in his attack. She realized suddenly that the youma had died and the lightning stopped, but with a delay. The lightning hadn't stopped until more than several seconds after the youma crumbled –

"Would you two stop flirting?" Again, a sarcastic voice pulled them apart; Serena jumped away to face Rini.

"We're not flirting," she said quickly, hoping the darkness his the miserable blush on her face.

"Like I give a care," said Rini, and her voice was just as bitter as theirs had been. "We need to move before these things come back, unless you DO have a death wish."

"You knew they were after you?"

Rini matched Tuxedo Mask's look with one of her own. "In case you didn't notice, I wasn't exactly begging you to take me home with you."

Tuxedo Mask opened his mouth –

A growl rumbled through the air above the sound of the pouring rain.

They both looked at Serena. She blushed madly.

"Sorry," she apologized, feeling suddenly very young and embarrassed, even though Rini was at least ten years younger than her and despite her facedown with Darien earlier. "I'm kind of hungry."

L

And that was how Serena found herself sitting in a twenty-four hour diner with Darien Shields and Asanuma's temporarily homeless cousin. Who, she discovered now that they were in a well-lit place, had pink hair.

This did not shock her as much as it might have otherwise. She was still a bit desensitized from the shock that Darien detransforming in front of a civilian had given her. He had given her a look that quite clearly reminded her that Asanuma's cousin knew about his fire powers, and that if he'd blabbed that much, he'd probably blabbed about them, too. Of course, for a child as sharp as Rini seemed to be, it probably wouldn't have taken her long to put two and two together and connect the blind superhero to the blind boy that showed up to eat with them. Still…at least he'd warned Rini not to tell anyone.

"The pancake delight, please," Serena said, returning the raised (and plucked) eyebrows the waitress gave her with a weak smile. They looked like a family of hobos – well, she and Rini did – they were soaked to the bone, and Rini had leaves and dirt in her hair, and she hid her bloody arms under the table. Darien had detransformed despite Rini's presence and in his jeans and t-shirt, didn't look as though he'd been on the run from the government for months.

"More coffee," said Darien.

"I'm okay," said Rini.

Serena sighed. "On second thought, make that three Pancake Delights, please," she told the waitress quietly. She turned her head back to see the two glaring at her.

"I hope two of those are for you, Odango," Darien said.

Serena flinched at the nickname. "Your face is the same color as the sidewalk," she said. The illumination of the diner had not just shown her Rini's appearance more clearly. "If you don't eat something, I'm not letting you follow us around all day."

Darien muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "As if you could stop me," but Serena missed it in the sudden rumble from beside her.

"Not hungry, huh?" said Darien.

Rini's face flushed about the same color as her hair. "Yuk it up, Cape Boy."

Darien and Serena both tensed, recalling Zoisite. Then Serena smiled, a little, and pushed the glass of water the waitress had brought toward Rini. "You're sure you don't want milk?"

"I'm sure." Rini pushed the glass onto a coaster and didn't drink.

"Okay." Serena sipped some of her chocolate milk through a straw, glancing out the window. The grey light of dawn should have appeared by now, but the sky was still dark, rain dripping down the windows. A thoughtful frown creased her face, and she glanced at Darien. Then she caught sight of Rini licking her lips and looking at the glass of water. Yet her water remained untouched. Serena realized that the child did not trust them. The realization made her voice gentle as she asked, "Why were those people after you, Rini?"

She had kept her gaze steady on Rini to see her reaction to the question, but the child's dirty face remained blank. As though she had expected such a question. Serena resisted the conditioned urge to narrate aloud Rini's expression for Darien.

"I don't know," said Rini.

Darien's voice wore an edge. "But you did know that they were pursuing you."

"I told you that I didn't want to come with you," Rini pointed out snidely. At their silence, she added in a mumble, "I didn't think they'd follow me here."

"Why not?"  
Rini did not answer.

Darien did not take very kindly to this. Serena saw his knuckles whiten around his mug. She interceded.

"You don't have _any_ idea why they're after you? Or who they are?"

"They want my parents," said Rini. "But I don't know where they are, and they don't give a care about me, anyway, so those morons are pretty stupid to be coming after me to get to them.

This speech out of a six year-old's mouth left Serena speechless. She found herself trying to catch Darien's eye, only to remember that he couldn't see her anyway, when their eyes met.

"Oh," she managed at last. "I'm sure that's not true."

"Like you could know how my parents feel," said Rini. "Anyway, I don't need help. If you don't want to get in trouble because of me, just let me go." She directed this last at Darien. "Let me talk to that Senshi lady one more time." She stood up to leave.

"Don't be an imbecile." Darien narrowed his eyes over the rim of his mug. "Sit down."

"Shields!" Serena protested at his language.

"Don't tell me what to do." Rini's eyes flashed.

"Rini!" Serena leaned forward, blocking the child's view of Darien. She stared at her until Rini returned her eyes. "Please stay?"

Rini stayed on her feet, glaring. "I don't need pity."

"It's not pity." Serena stayed sitting; Rini would have to climb out of the booth over her. "You know Asanuma, right? He's our friend. That makes you our friend, too."

"Faulty logic," muttered Darien, and she kicked him under the table, hard. She meant it.

"We're – Sailor Moon's a Senshi," she said. "It's her job to be in danger."

Darien jerked forward at this; she kicked his shin under the table again, furious with him for being so cruel to the little girl.

"In fact, she gets into a ton of trouble just by herself, so a little extra's not going to make a difference," Serena continued, staring into Rini's blue eyes. "And just because you don't want her to help you won't stop her from doing it anyway."

At last Rini sat back down, but with obvious reluctance. Serena breathed a sigh of relief, but wondered what any relatives of Asanuma had done that had youma after them.

"Who are the people after your parents, do you know?" she asked.

"I don't know their names," said Rini. "But they call themselves the Black Moon. They're a terrorist group."

Serena looked at Darien. He had his chin in a hand but shook his head, once. "I haven't heard of that group before. Granted…" he trailed off, brows furrowing thunderously.

"What do they want?" Serena asked Rini.

"I told you. My parents."

"No, I mean – what do they want your parents for? Who are your parents?"

Rini stared at Serena stonily.

"You don't know?" Serena tried to interpret, feeling like the prince talking to the mute little mermaid. Rini just stared at her. "You can't tell us?"

Rini narrowed her eyes. "I don't know you," she said bluntly.

"Yet here you sit with us," Darien said under his breath.

Rini just shook her head.

Their food came, and they fell quiet, but even after the waitress had left, no one moved to lift their silverware. There was a feeling of incompletion hanging over them.

"You'll stay with me, then," Serena decided. "Until Numa comes back. If you don't mind. I'll come up with something to tell Mom and Dad. You didn't bring anything with you, right?"

"I had to run."

"That's what we'll do today, then," said Serena. "Shopping. You'll need clothes. And Numa probably would be grateful to escape doing THAT chore." Serena looked hopefully at Darien, as though expecting him to decline being dragged through racks and racks of clothing, but he merely said, "Fine."

The atmosphere of incompletion faded, and Serena dug into her pancakes with a smile. They were very hot and very fluffy, and if they were not quite as good as Lita's – which she had not eaten in a very long time – well, the syrup was yummier than the storebought stuff that they usually used.

Serena finished long before Rini or Darien, and each took about half an hour longer than her to finish. But it was still very early when they left the diner (Darien insisted on covering the tab).

"I don't think anywhere's open yet," said Serena, eyeing the dark sky and trying to ignore the feeling of Darien standing behind her – not too close, but close enough to send goosebumps up her arms beneath her long sleeves. She rubbed her arms briskly, banishing them away. "What shall we do?"

Rini didn't say anything, but Serena saw her dragging her fingers through her matted, dirt-scattered hair. She also noticed afresh her bloodied arms and remembered the way the waitress had looked at them.

"Let's go to your apartment," she told Darien abruptly. "Rini needs to wash up."

"What?" said Darien, his hands emerging from his pockets. "Why can't she shower at your house?"

"Like a smart boy like you doesn't know the answer to that question," Serena retorted, trying to ignore both her own voice yelling at her for acting familiar with him and Miss Lanai's voice telling her to stay away from him. There was really was no other choice. Her parents would definitely notice her coming back home at six in the morning with a kindergartner in tow. She needed time to think up a cover story. "Come on."

L

A/N: Like I said – please review. The sooner you tell me what needs fixing, the sooner it can be fixed.


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: Please review what you think of this chapter. I NEED TO KNOW what you think of it. Darien's driving me insane. I think he thinks I'm an idiot. I need direction from people who can see this from an aerial view, because I'm stuck in the forest and can't see whether this path is exactly the right one. Does that make sense?

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Twelve: The Rain Kept Falling

L

The click of the bathroom door locking behind Rini echoed loudly in the silence of Darien's dark apartment. Serena cleared her throat and crossed quickly to the coffee table, flicking on a lamp. The light revealed a living room that was identical to the one she had last seen, months ago. The only difference was the picture frames that now all lay facedown in their spots.

Serena stared at them for a moment, fighting mingled emotions. For if it had been only her picture that he had turned down, she could have found comfort in the face that he was angry at her – but even the picture of Darien and Motoki at their middle school graduation, on the corner table, was facedown.

She turned, lips parting to scold him, to question him –

Then she closed them. It was none of her business. Darien's life was none of her business.

Instead, she made her voice professional. "Where was that youma from, do you think?"

Darien was sitting in his armchair, hand clenched at his chin. In the dim lighting of the diner, though Rini's hair color had been visible, Serena had seen the pallor of his face but not the faint sheen of perspiration that covered it. She saw it now, in the lamplight.

She took a step closer. "Shields?"

Outside, thunder crashed. Serena started, flattening herself against the wall. Her eyes, wide, were glued to Darien, and she saw his eyes pulse gold as a flash of lightning suddenly bathed the room in white light.

There was another crash of thunder, quieter this time, and a tension that Serena had not even noticed before drained from Darien's shoulders.

"It's under control now," he said.

Serena's eyes flicked to the glass doors of the balcony, then back to Darien, realization flowing through her.

"You made it storm?" she said, quietly.

"Something entered the atmosphere." He sat forward, elbows on knees. "It was what woke me up – " The expression he shot her was accusing and angry. " – after you left."

"Something like what?" Serena ignored the look that he was giving her. She also tried to ignore the way her heart had suddenly sped up. They were alone, without Rini… _"I love – "_

"Something enormous," he replied grimly. "Larger than the cumulonimbus cloud that was forming over Minato ward."

Serena tried to remember which ones were cumulonimbus clouds…

"Storm clouds," Darien said. Again, he seemed irritated. "The big puffy dark ones. Remember, I tutored you for that test – "

"I guess you're not a very good teacher, then!" Serena was flushed. "What was it?"

"Like I know," Darien said. "But whatever it was, it reeked of youma. And it sounds like that kid left the same time it appeared."

"She's not a youma," Serena said.

"She's something," said Darien flatly. "Why'd she run away from you if she doesn't have something to hide?"

Serena pursed her lips. "What'd you do to the big thing?"

"I rained it out."

"And it worked?" Serena glanced out at the rain still pouring down, and at her soaked school shirt.

Again, Darien's smile was grim. "I poured a lot of water on it." His shirt was almost as soaked as Serena's was, but with sweat. "It went to ground. But I'd rather try to drown it all the way than let up on the rain."

Serena eyed his sweat-soaked shirt dubiously. "Can you handle it?" she said, careful not to sound too concerned.

"I just lost control of the storm a little." Darien clenched his fists. "The electrons got a little excited coming into contact with such a concentrated dose of the Golden Crystal. I didn't realize the effect it would have."

"I see," said Serena. She looked out the window again. "It won't happen again?"

"It won't," said Darien. A bit of apprehension colored his face suddenly. "Serena – "

The bathroom door opened. Serena shot to her feet.

Water, the light, shampoo, and soap had made Rini into nearly a whole different person. With her soaked hair close to her head instead of sticking out ferociously all over, and without blood spattering her skin, she looked much more like a vulnerable elementary schooler and much less like an undersized Amazon. And with the leaves and dirt washed from Rini's hair, Serena could see that the dark spots near her scalp that she had thought were dirt were actually dark roots growing back in.

"Your hair's dyed?" she blurted out. Who dyed their hair PINK?

Rini sighed, shuffling out of the bathroom. The pocket on the front of her shirt flopped sadly, only hanging on to the rest of the shirt by a few threads. "It's a long story."

"It's brown, usually?" said Serena curiously, stepping closer to bend and comb her fingers through it. She examined the dark milk chocolate color before Rini shrugged her away and began finger-combing the tangled pink mass herself.

"Put it up." Darien had vanished like a shadow in the light; now he reappeared, a baseball cap in his hand. "Then put this on."

Rini looked at the hat, then at both Serena and Darien. "This is Asanuma's," she said, not quite accusingly.

"What's on it?" Darien asked Serena.

Serena looked at it and blushed. She whispered something at Darien, looking carefully at the ground as she did so.

"For the love of - " Darien muttered. He took the hat, disappeared into his room again, then came back with a plain black baseball cap, which he fairly threw at Rini. "That idiot probably left it here on purpose."

"I can do it myself!" Rini yanked the hat back from Serena, who had begun to twist her hair up, and stuffed her hair into a sloppy twist. She wrenched the hat atop her head. Without the mass of pink to distract from her face, her eyes – big and blue – jumped out of her small pale face. She glared at both Serena and Darien with them. "Are you going out looking like that?"

Serena was glad at that moment that Darien could not see Rini, or he probably would have made a "pot calling the kettle black" retort.

She looked down at herself, in a soaked school uniform, and at Darien, whose t-shirt was wet with sweat.

"Um…" she said, then snapped her fingers. "I'll just use your hairdryer, Shields!"

"My what?" said Darien, and she stepped on his foot.

"It won't take long!" She darted into the bathroom. The smell of Darien's shampoo hit her like a wall – she inhaled deeply, then stopped abruptly as she realized what she was doing.

She closed her eyes and tried to breathe deeply without noticing the familiar scent, to clear her mind instead. She did not want any embarrassing sniffing memories reaching Darien when she did what she was about to do.

After a few minutes, her mind was about as clear as it was going to get. He gripped her brooch, transformed fast – faster than a blink – then detransformed back. The nanosecond intervals were still long enough for her to sense Darien quite clearly, the familiar taste of his mind. Another, strange sensation accompanied it – a permeating scent that seemed like a familiar mixture of flowers and berries.

She dredged her mind up out of the reverie and looked down at herself. Yup, it had worked. Her uniform was dry now, and she also – she grabbed a handful of bangs and sniffed them – smelled like a human being now, too.

She opened the bathroom door.

Rini, sitting stiffly as a statue on one of the breakfast bar stools, looked at her. "That's a quiet hairdryer," she said.

"Shields buys only the best for his hair," said Serena, laughing with a hand at her neck.

"I heard that," said Darien's voice right into her ear.

Serena jumped nearly a mile in the air. "Oh my God," she wheezed, clutching her heart.

Darien smiled down at her. She sidled away from him, toward Rini. "Um – " she said distractedly. "Do you still have the umbrellas we bought – I mean, do you have any umbrellas?"

The smile slid from Darien's face. He turned away from her, fishing his keys from his pocket. He had changed into a different pair of jeans and a brown t-shirt that went not at all well with his black hair. "They're wherever you left them."

Silently, Serena went to the hall closet. Two umbrellas, one red and one white with red hearts splattered across it, were wedged between a spare blanket and a spare pillow. She stared at them for a moment, then picked them up and straightened.

"We'll share, okay?" she told Rini, wordlessly handing the red umbrella to Darien and keeping the other.

L

The rain continued throughout the day. Darien felt Serena looking over at him every once in a while, felt the weight of her eyes raking across his face. At least, he thought that he meant it, but he was aware of how far gone he was, aware of the high probability that he had only imagined it. And every time he realized it afresh, the rain poured harder.

The kid spoke little, and he spoke even less. Serena filled the air with a flow of chatter, continuing it even over the dressing room door as Rini tried on jeans. How cute the shirts at the front of the store had been, how pretty the dog the lady had been walking outside was, what Asanuma was probably up to at this very moment.

Lunch continued in the same vein, and their return to Darien's apartment, sloshing down the wet streets, didn't break the trend.

"Why are we going back to his house?"

Already so far today, the kid had shown that she preferred talking to Serena over talking to him; the few words she'd uttered had been to Serena. It didn't bother him; the little spore was a nuisance just like her cousin. He'd been _this close_ to telling Serena, and now who knew when he'd screw up the courage again –

"Because Shields asked us to." Serena sounded uncomfortable.

"And why did he ask you to?"

"Ever heard that children should be seen and not heard?" Darien said, sharply.

"You _can't_ see me."

"O-KAY!" Serena cried. "Look, we're here! Rini, why don't you get dressed – " Darien heard the sound of her shoving Rini, bags and all, into the bathroom and slamming the door shut.

Again, the click of the door locking behind her echoed loudly in the silence.

Serena turned around. Clearing her throat and avoiding looking at Darien, she sat on the edge of a stool at the breakfast bar.

"You still doing okay?" she said, hoarsely. Talking nonstop all day with two sovereigns of silence had worn her out more than she thought. "With the rain, I mean?"

Darien's nod was more a jerk of his head than anything else.

"Sorry about her," Serena said, thinking back to what Rini had said. "I…"

"You don't have to apologize for her," said Darien. "She's not _your_ kid."

Serena nodded her head, also jerkily, and looked around again. Being back in Darien's apartment for the second time that day didn't agitate her, no sir, not one bit. That wasn't the spot on the counter where she'd lost hold of a butcher knife and nicked the countertop, and that burner on the stove wasn't the one that always burned her attempts at scrambled eggs, and that she'd never used that checkered red oven mitt.

Darien moved around to the niche between the refrigerator and stove. The aroma of coffee filled the room. She watched him pour a mug of it and followed the curve of his shadowed jaw as he sipped, wondering how much he had slept in the past week. But she didn't ask. It was too familiar a question, and furthermore, it would lead to another fight. And the fights between them recently were too volatile now, fizzling like hydrogen peroxide on an open wound. Except that hydrogen peroxide sterilized a wound, while she always came away from a fight with Darien feeling as though she was full of poison.

Leaning against the counter, Darien could feel the warmth radiating from her a foot away. He wished that he had thought to put a potted plant inside so that he could pluck a leaf and see her. Even more, he wished that he had the guts to reach out and touch the rope to find out what she was thinking. Or even better – to touch _her._

He heard a scuffle, the fidget of her feet.

"After a day with her, do you still think she's a yo – "

"I know she's not a youma." Agitation prickled under Darien's skin. "I don't want to talk about the kid right now, Odango."

The nickname should have injected him with the courage to continue, it should have supplemented the courage that was rushing from him like sand through his fingers. Instead, a horrible silence filled the air.

Serena's voice, after a pregnant minute, broke the silence. Her voice pretended that there hadn't just been that long silence. "Thanks for letting her shower here this morning. Is that a new mug? It's very pretty, I like the pattern – "

She was babbling. Darien had pushed himself away from the counter and was padding toward her before he realized it.

"Oh, what's this?" He felt her scramble off the stool and dart to the other end of the counter. "This is a new oven mitt! It's really pretty, too, how nice – "

"You bought it," said Darien, matching her every step. There was no escape for her now unless she vaulted the breakfast bar – and he wouldn't put it past her. "Stop avoiding me, Serena."

"We – we _agreed_!" Serena's voice trembled, panicked. "We had a _deal_, I told you that I'm a danger to the princess – "

Darien's fist slammed down on the counter. His own voice shook. "Who keeps feeding you that bull?"

Serena tried to talk without breathing right into his face; she turned her head desperately, but his arm was right there. "N-no one!" she managed.

"Then what in the hell is giving you that damn moronic idea?" He bent his head closer; his bangs were against hers, they whispered softly together. He was trying to comfort her in the way only way her knew – using logic. "Serena, do you really think _you_'d be able to hurt the _Moon Princess_? Her power has to be an exponent of yours…you wouldn't even be able to give her a paper cut!"

Serena sucked in a breath of air. She felt as though he'd just slapped her across the face – even though she knew it was true, it was all true, and she didn't resent it – she didn't, she didn't…but for Darien to say it to her like this, it felt like having the muscle peeled away from her still-beating heart.

"You think I don't know that?" Her voice was a whisper. "I'm not an idiot."

"You're acting like one!" Darien had sensed that something hadn't quite worked. His nerve was disappearing as quickly as a retracted tape measure. He tried to keep hold of both his nerve and Serena: he grabbed her shoulders, working himself up into indignant anger. "Running around in the middle of the night, fighting youma untransformed, sneaking out without telling your parents – do I need to continue, Serena, or is the picture becoming clear to you?"

"You don't – " Serena was still whispering. "You don't – "

She still wasn't listening to him. Darien took a deep breath.

"It wasn't even just your own life you endangered!" he told her. "That little girl, you risked her life, too. She could have _died_! And why?" His grip tightened. "Because you were _too proud to wake me up!_"

Serena's eyes widened.

_Seven people are dead today in a youma attack on a local movie theater…where was Sailor Moon?_ The newscasters staring out of the camera, as though at her…

_Daddy's dead…Mommy says the Sailor Senshi should have been there… _Buji crying at the mall, his head pushing her brooch against her skin…

Serena let herself sink bonelessly to the floor.

Darien gripped her shoulders, crouching with her, his sightless eyes wide. He transferred his hold to under her arms, propping her up. "Serena!"

Panic and guilt filled him like vomit. How had he let those cruel words leave his lips? To Serena, to Serena – after he had sworn never to corrupt Serena, to pollute the Moon Princess with his hatred and rage, but never Serena –

His hands trembled, and he sank his face to her hair. All his anger had fled him at that moment, evaporated in the heat of the pure, unadulterated anguish and desperation he felt. It steeped every fiber of his being.

Serena pulled away. He let her go. Her hair slid across the tile.

"I'm sorry." His voice was a whisper.

"Don't be." Serena's was a murmur, blank as a sheet of paper. "I did risk Rini's safety. It won't happen again, Prince Endymion."

Darien froze. Right there, with his knees digging into the tile and his forehead against the oven, he froze.

Then he spoke.

"Don't you dare call me that," he hissed. "Don't you _dare _call me that damn name."

His hands were on her shoulders, tight as steel, and then his lips were on hers, hard.

The bathroom door opened.

L

L

A/N: Please, this is the chapter that I really need reviews on. How do you feel about Serena and Darien?


	13. Chapter 13

A/N: At last, a decently-lengthed chapter. I remember the old days, when I considered eight pages a long chapter. (Shudder) How embarrassing.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Thirteen: Rained Out

L

Rini watched the blonde girl take a deep breath. They'd stood at the front gate of a two-story house for about a minute now.

"If you don't want to take me in, just say so," Rini said. She hoped that the goody two-shoes chatterbox blonde would admit that no, she didn't want to take Rini in, and stop acting like such a saint about it. Then Rini could go camp out in Asanuma's backyard until he came home, and then they'd figure everything out.

"No! It's not that at all!" Serena's head snapped down to stare at her. The horrified expression in her face pulled at her scars, yanking her lips tight and making her look even more like an escapee from a theme park haunted house. Rini's eyes flinched away.

Serena continued. "I'm just…trying to figure out how to ask my parents."

"You mean your parents aren't as gullible as you?" Rini muttered under her breath, not intending the blonde to hear.

But she did. "No…" Serena laughed a little, hand behind her neck.

Rini waited a few more minutes as the other girl fell silent again, chewing her lip. Then she began to tap her foot.

"You know what?" said Serena suddenly. "Truth is best, right?" Without waiting for an answer to her question (which Rini supposed was probably rhetorically intended anyway) she pushed open the gate and marched up the cobbled front walk.

Borrowed backpack of new clothes heavy on her back, Rini followed Serena. As she went, she examined the house, which she had not been able to see well in the dark last night, a grimace pulling at her mouth.

She was acutely aware that she had fallen – like a person not paying enough attention to where they were going – with one foot in the whole while yanking the other up just in time. She had let her guard down enough to trust this Tsukino Serena just because of those dumb, ugly scars, and that had been stupid. Just because someone was facially disfigured didn't meant that they weren't evil. In fact, according to all the storybook clichés, it worked in the opposite direction. She should not be here with this scarred girl right now, she should not have even spoken to that Sailor Senshi who claimed to be the Senshi of the Moon, and she certainly wished that she had never met the blind man in the tuxedo. If she had stayed calm enough, if she had not let her fear get the best of her, she would have been smart enough to go straight to Asanuma's house whether he was gone or not, and wait for him.

But for now…for now one foot was stuck, and she had to do her best to keep the other one from getting trapped, too. And that meant, for now, playing along with Tsukino Serena.

Green grass poked up perkily all along the front yard, lined with vivacious flowers that screamed nurturing. Two wicker chairs sat on the front porch with embroidered seat cushions tied onto them, while a Welcome mat sat on the doorstep. Yes, this house fit Tsukino Serena to a 'T.'

Rini's lip twisted. She probably had doting parents and a bevy of siblings, too. She watched Serena unlock the door, hearing footsteps padding toward it as she opened it.

"MEATBALL HEAD!" cried a voice, yanking the door from the inside and yanking it the rest of the way open. "Did you steal my Mortal Kombat game – who's that?"

Rini regarded the boy in the doorway, her eyes lingering on his brown hair. "Meatball Head?" she said, glancing up at Serena.

The blonde girl flicked her a sheepish grin that stretched her scars again. "This is Sammy," she said. "My little brother. Sammy, I haven't TOUCHED your Mortal Kombat game, and this is Rini."

"Hmph," said Sammy, wrinkling his nose at her and giving them both a strange look. His eyes lingered on her hair, eyebrows aloft. "Hi."

"So…can we get through?" Serena nudged Sammy in the knee with a foot, pushing him.

He yelped, aiming a karate chop at her, and fled back into the house, disappearing down a hallway. "MIKA'S COMING IN AN HOUR!" he yelled from wherever he had gone. "YOU BETTER NOT EMBARRASS ME IN FRONT OF HER!"

"I DON'T NEED TO EMBARRASS YOU, YOU EMBARRASS YOURSELF!" Serena yelled back, ushering Rini into the hallway and closing the door behind both of them. Rini ignored both of their antics, glancing around the front hallway and the living room it opened onto, with dark blue furniture and an extensive video game collection, though not as big as Asanuma's.

"Sammy, Serena, what's all this noise…oh, who have we here?"

Rini's eyes flicked from the living room to the other end of the hallway, where a violet-haired woman in an apron had emerged, wiping her hands on a dishtowel.

Rini pressed her hands together quickly and bowed. "My name is Rini, ma'am," she said. "I am sorry for intruding in your home."

"Oh, not at all, sweetheart!" The woman, undoubtedly Serena's mother, smiled, obviously charmed. "Are you here to teach Serena manners?"

"Mom," Serena protested, and the woman giggled. Her hair was dark black, so black that it almost shone violet, but definitely black, Rini decided. She thought of Sammy's brown hair, and of all the black and brown hair that she'd seen on the streets and in the shops. She had not seen one person with hair that was genuinely any color except black or brown save for the Sailor Senshi who called herself Sailor Moon and save for Serena.

"Come into the kitchen, you two, and you can tell me what you're up to." Mrs. Tsukino gestured them after her into the other doorway leading off of the hallway. The woman seemed just as naïve as her daughter, then, inviting a strange little girl into her house like this. Then again, it didn't seem as though people from this time were accustomed to constant attacks from alien terrorist groups, either.

The dining room adjoining the kitchen, where Mrs. Tsukino led them, was bright despite the fact that dusk had fallen outside. A stereo played classical music in the corner, and three different lights were on. After such a dreary day of rain, the kilowatts hurt Rini's eyes.

"Ooh, we're having spaghetti?" Serena exclaimed, leaning over the stove.

"Yeeees," said Mrs. Tsukino. Rini, watching the adoring smile she bestowed upon her daughter, was certain she could feel a cavity forming in her teeth. She gripped the straps of her knapsack tight. "But are you sure you have room for my cooking after spending all day with Chef Lita?"

"I'm sure I can make room." Serena returned the smile, and Rini felt vaguely annoyed. All this smiling after the gloomy day filled with Serena's nervous chatter was like nearly dying of thirst in the desert and being given syrup to quench your thirst.

"You're a sweet-talker." Mrs. Tsukino ruffled Serena's hair. "Would you like something to drink, Rini?"

"Yes, please, ma'am," said Rini promptly and politely. "May I have a glass of milk?"

"Of course!" Mrs. Tsukino bustled to the refrigerator, opening it up, then danced to the cupboard to pull out a class. "Will you be staying with us for dinner, Rini? Sammy already has a friend coming over, I've made extra."

Rini glanced at Serena. This was the perfect opening; she would be stupid not to take it –

"Actually, Mom – " Serena stumbled forth. "That was what I kind of had a question about. See, Rini's a cousin of Asanuma's, and her parents sent her to stay with his family for a while, but Asanuma's parents had to leave on one of his diplomatic trips, you know, and they asked me if we could take Rini, and I totally forgot until today – "

Rini made her downcast, letting her lashes brush her cheeks as she clasped her hands bashfully behind her back.

"So… I was hoping…could she stay with us till they get back?" Serena ventured.

"I don't see why not." Mrs. Tsukino's answer came far more quickly than Rini expected, and far more easily. Her head jerked backward, and she stared at the woman, who smiled at her. "I just have to tell your father, but I'm sure there's no problem." She crinkled her nose playfully at Rini. "Although he may wonder about your hair."

Serena laughed, grinning at Rini. Rini returned it politely, then bowed to Serena's mother. "Thank you very much, Mrs. Tsukino. I am very sorry to impose."

The woman laughed, just as Serena had. "No imposition! After all, Asanuma's been teaching Serena how to drive for us, and you don't know how many heart attacks that's saved her father from…"

Serena pouted. "Hey!"

"Um…" All this lovey-dovey interaction was really getting on her nerves. Asanuma had better get back soon; she wouldn't be able to take this for long. "May I take my bag somewhere, Serena-san?"

"Oh! Yes!" Serena leapt to her feet. "Here, you'll stay with me in my bedroom – again – " she added quietly to Rini, giving her a smile that was probably meant to be conspiratorial.

Serena's brown-haired father, when he arrived home from a photo shoot, was just as joke-y and laugh-y as the rest of the Tsukino family – in fact, Rini was vaguely surprised to see that Serena was actually the quietest of the bunch, though of course considering the bunch it was quite relative. Mika, Sammy's friend who showed up with a bunch of wildflowers for Mrs. Tsukino and a tiny sculpture for Serena, would have been the quietest had Rini not been there.

Rini was relieved that Serena had the common sense to excuse them both from after-supper board games, saying they they'd had a busy day and needed to get Rini situated before hitting the hay. Mrs. Tsukino offered to bring up bedding for Rini, but Serena said she could get it herself.

The little spot of cleared floor where Rini had lain the night before was still there, and Rini headed straight for it.

"Wait," said Serena, rubbing her eyes. "Let me get some pillow and blankets."

"I'm fine," said Rini.

"It'll look way suspicious to my mom if our house guest sleeps on a patch of floor without even a pillow," said Serena, offering her a smile. Rini had noticed her smiles shrinking smaller and smaller as the day wore on. Serena had finally realized that Rini had little use for them, she supposed. It was about time. "It'll only take a minute. Do you want to brush your teeth while I'm getting them? There's an extra toothbrush in the left drawer."

The toothbrush was pink. Rini eyed it, then tore open the packaging and brushed her teeth. She had to admit it felt nice; it had been about two days since she'd last brushed her teeth, and it felt like much longer. Then she splashed her face and put on the immature pink bunny rabbit pajamas Serena had picked out that morning.

"Oh, those look cute on you," Serena said with a tired smile when Rini entered the bedroom again. She had cleared a much larger patch of floor and was just billowing a pink quilt out over the sheets and pillows she'd laid down. Was everything that she picked pink?

She saw Serena bite her lip. "Rini, you can have the bed."

"Nonsense," Rini said, walking past the kneeling blonde and plopping down on the pink blanket. Despite its pinkess, it was pretty soft against her bare toes. She crawled under it and yanked it resolutely over her. "It's yours."

"But – "

"Good night." Rini squeezed her eyes shut. She listened to the sound of Serena's sigh, of her knees creaking as she climbed to her feet, and the sound of her pulling open a drawer, then her bedroom door. Then the sound of the faucet in the bathroom, the sound of Serena's bare feet padding back into the room, quietly closing the door, then the whisper of the mattress as she climbed beneath the covers.

And later, the sound of Serena's quiet crying muffled by her pillow.

Rini let her eyes drift open again. She looked at the closed window and wondered if _he_ was out there again. Her stomach flipped nervously despite her defiant efforts to still it.

Serena's crying kept Rini awake. She pushed her head deeper into the pillow, gritting her teeth in annoyance. Every other minute, she decided that she would sit up and tell Serena to stop sniffling like a baby, but every time she clamped down on her tongue before she could make a sound. Rini tried to ignore her, to forget the kiss that she had walked in on, but her stomach flipped worse than ever. What if it was…

_Stop._ She grabbed at annoyance and yanked it around her like the curtain on her four-poster bed at home. Why was the dummy crying, anyway? She'd kissed him, hadn't she? Why was she crying about it?

Serena didn't have any reason to cry, that was what, Rini thought snappishly. She shoved her head deeper into the pillow, glaring. If anyone had a reason to cry, it was her. Lost in wherever this place was with those people after her and Asanuma gone and maybe he even wouldn't recognize her when he did come back and she'd be stuck here forever –

Burning started in her throat and climbed up to her eyes. Rini clamped her jaw and turned her face into the pillow before any tears could leak out. She wasn't a baby. Only _babies_ cried.

Them, and stupid girls who liked stupid boys, she thought rebelliously, seething at the girl in the bed above her.

L

Serena woke abruptly, sitting up as suddenly as if she had already been awake. Then she blinked and looked around her room, certain that she had forgotten something. What had she forgotten…her mind veered toward yesterday, and Darien, and immediately skittered away. In its attempt to avoid that electric fence, it smacked straight into the object it had been looking for.

"Rini!" she gasped, scrambling to the edge of the bed and peering over. The crack of sunlight from between her curtains bounced onto neatly made sheets and blankets, but not the pink-haired child.

Serena glanced around her room before thundering down the stairs. "MOM!" She clattered to the foot of the stairs and stopped. "Oh! Rini! Here you are!"

"Where'd you think she was, meatball brain?" Sammy rolled his eyes at her from where he sat next to Rini at the table. "You want any chocolate syrup for your milk, Rini?"

"No, thank you," said Rini politely, her hands clasped neatly in her lap. Her neatly brushed hair and overalls contrasted sharply with the bedhead and bathrobes that Sammy and Mr. Tsukino, at the table, and Mrs. Tsukino, humming in front of the stove as she fired bacon, sported. "I am sorry for worrying you, Serena-san."

"Oh…that's okay," said Serena, eyebrows lifting a little at this courtesy from Rini. After only a day with the child she had discovered that the girl was uber-polite to everyone but her – well, and Darien – she winced – and she wondered uncertainly why this had suddenly changed. "Sorry I was still sleeping. You can wake me up next time."

"Don't do it, Serena needs as much beauty sleep as she can get," Sammy stage-whispered to Rini.

"SAMMY – "

"Would you like some bacon, sweetheart?" Mrs. Tsukino placed a plate in front of Serena's face.

Serena inhaled deeply, then shot Sammy a dirty look. "You're lucky," she said darkly, then plopped down across from Rini and , folding a piece of steaming bacon into her mouth. "Ow! Hot!"

Her mother shook her head. "Oh, Serena…"

"Isn't that cannibalism?" pointed out Sammy, grinning. "A pig eating a fellow pig?"

Serena flushed. "You're just mad because Mika paid more attention to me than she did to you last night."

It was Sammy's turn to flush tomato red. "What?" he yelped. "That's not – I don't – " he spluttered, turning redder with each word. "_Mom_!"

"If you think you deserve any help after that pig comment, you have another think coming, mister," said Ikuko severely, buttering a slice of toast. "Especially in front of company! Would you like some toast, Rini, dear?"

"Yes, thank you, Tsukino-san," said Rini.

"So, what are your plan for today?" Mr. Tsukino set down his paper at last, reaching surreptitiously past Serena for the last piece of bacon. Her fork stabbed downward, spearing the slice, and he retreated with a sigh.

"How many have you had?" Serena demanded.

He sighed again. "Six."

"Six?" Serena repeated, lower lip jutting out. "Then this one is DEFINITELY mine." She stuffed it in her mouth, smiling contently as she munched the yummy saltiness. "Mmmm…"

"Anyway," said Mr. Tsukino, glancing around. "Ikuko-mama and I are going to the flea market. Anyone want to come?"

"That depends, are you buying?" asked Sammy.

"That depends, what are you looking to get?" returned Mr. Tsukino.

As the two haggled, Ikuko looked at the girls. "And you two, sweethearts? Would you like to come?"

Rini looked at Serena. Serena looked back at her, trying to read in her eyes whether she wanted to or not. But the little girl was inscrutable as _Darien_ – Serena lashed away _again_ from that thought. No thinking about him!

"Please excuse us, Mrs. Tsukino, but I'm a little tired of shopping. We went all over yesterday. I think I'll pass."

"I understand." Ikuko patted Rini's hand. "You're just going to relax, hmm?"

Serena contained her disappointment. She would have liked to go the flea market with her family; certainly Darien wouldn't have dared come near them around her father…

But still, there was Lita to be told. And Motoki, actually, since he was in the loop now… Serena looked at Rini thoughtfully.

"I think we'll go to the arcade today, Mama," she said. "I want Rini to meet Lita." 

L

"Three number 6 combos, a number 3, and two chocolate milkshakes." Lita slapped the order on the counter.

Motoki glanced at her with a tentative smile as she passed him at the register; she mustered one in return.

Then she busied herself quickly refilling Table Eight's coffee mugs. As the dark liquid poured out, she wondered if she should quit. She'd only taken this job for one reason…

"Heeeeey!" It was one of the frat boys from Table Nine, leaning waaaay out of the booth to sing at her. "Is our order ready, pretty lady?"

The old lady in church clothes who Lita had just handed a sugar packet rolled her eyes at her. Lita gave her a grateful smile back. She said, "I'll check" to the college guy and returned to the counter with her empty coffee pot.

"Is the combo order ready yet, Saki?" she tapped her tray against her leg. She wanted to get the college guys _out _of the arcade. It was clear from their rumpled clothing, strong cologne, and red-rimmed eyes that they'd come in looking to prolong a sleepless Saturday night of partying, and it seemed inevitable to her that they would end up making some sort of ruckus.

"Here you go, Lita." Plates landed on her tray. She braced it against her hip and headed back out again.

A hand caught her sleeve. She tensed, glancing up, and found Motoki leaning toward her from the other side of the counter.

"Are those guys giving you trouble?"

Lita shrugged him off. "I'm a big girl, Toki." She held a third degree black belt in two types of martial arts, not him. So he suddenly had a power to use electricity; that didn't give the right to act like she was helpless, like she needed –

She exhaled. "I'm fine," she said, trying to sound gentler, and patted him on the shoulder as she headed to Table Nine.

"Here it comes!" The frat boys began cheering, banging their silverware on the table.

"Simmer down, boys," Lita said, leaning over to hand the milkshake to the one in the far corner. She was acutely aware of the stares a couple of them had fixed on her chest. She felt like upending the full tray on their heads.

As fate turned out, that was what happened – but not through any break in her self-discipline. One of the frat boys, sweeping his hands all over as he described a conquest to the table, knocked his hand right into the tray. An explosion of carbonated soda and cold ice cream showered down on Lita and the perpetrator.

The guy yelped. "What the fu – "

"Don't finish that," Lita warned him in a growl. Hot fudge dripped from her eyelashes, and, she felt, down her shirt. "There are kids here."

"Like I care!" snapped the guy, struggling out of the booth and holding his sopping shirt away from his chest. Too late, Lita smelled the alcohol on his breath. She folded one arm against her wet-shirt and slapped the tray against her thigh with the other. "You – "

"What's the problem here?" Motoki had appeared, with a smiling face but watchful eyes.

"I can handle this," Lita muttered to him.

She felt his eyes rake her. "Not soaking wet like that, you aren't," he murmured back to her.

A searing blend of humiliation and fury swept through her. There was no explanation for that kind of emotion, that intense nausea she felt at him looking at her like that, the same way the college guys had been doing, since she had never minded when they were kissing, but it was, and he was treating her like effing _property_ – she shoved the tray at him, knowing she had to get out of the arcade before she lost it and punched someone.

"I've gotta go." She spun on her heel. She left the arcade, fists trembling.

Her head down, fists clenched, she was hardly watching where she was going, and most pedestrians, noting her soaked appearance, had veered out of her way. This guy hadn't, though, probably because he was hungover from a late Saturday night.

Lita bowled right into him in front of an alley, mumbled "Sorry" and then, at the same time as fingers closed around her shoulders, smelled the alcohol stench wafting into her face.

"What, do you bastards travel in packs?" She slapped the hands away and kept walking. "Get a life."

"Hey!" The sloppy exclamation was followed by a hand grabbing her hip.

Lita pivoted. Her leg slammed into the bastard's ribcage. He slammed backward, into a Dumpster that stood at the edge of the alley, then staggered back up.

"B…itch!" he slurred, lurching forward.

Lita slammed the heel of her hand up into his chin, relishing the snap his jaw made as his teeth slammed together. Then in almost the same motion she planted a foot in his chest and slammed him back into the wall. His head crashed against the brick. He slumped down to the sidewalk, groaning.

Lita stepped on one of his hands, lying on the pavement. He groaned.

"You gonna try that again?" She ground the ball of her foot, the tread of her sneaker, onto his fingers.

"No…no" he gasped, eyes fluttering open.

Despite herself, Lita felt a surge of disappointment. She would have liked to pulp him some more. She needed to pulp something right now.

But it would have to wait. Grinding her foot across his fingers one last time, Lita set off on her way again, her fists clenching afresh.

She did not notice, even in the corner of her eye, the pink-haired child who had watched everything from inside the nearby bakery.

L

Serena led Rini to the counter, then stood as Rini climbed into a stool. There was no one behind the counter; she stood on her tiptoes, scanning the hive of booths and tables and video games.

"Do you see blond hair anywhere, Rini?" she asked, setting the bag of pork buns she'd picked up for her mother at the bakery on the counter.

"Other than yours?"

"Yes – oh, never mind! Here he comes!" Serena lifted an arm, waving. "Yoohoo!"

Motoki's eyes locked onto hers and his brows rose. He held a tray of empty glasses in one hand and a mop in the other. He made a motion to her to wait, then disappeared behind the counter, into the staff room.

"_That_'s Lita?" said Rini.

Serena giggled despite the worry she had felt at the expression on Motoki's face – the tired eyes, the downward tug at his mouth. "No, silly. That's Motoki. He's Lita's boyfriend."

"Hmm."

Serena was about to add that Motoki was Asanuma's friend, too, when Motoki reappeared.

"Hey, Usa," he said, making his way over to them. He smiled at her, then his forehead furrowed a little. "And who's your friend?"

"This is Rini," Serena introduced. "Rini, this is Motoki. He's friends with Asanuma."

She saw the swift look that Rini shot at her, but then Motoki spoke.

"Sorry," he said to Rini, stooping a little. "But have we met before?"

"Maybe," said Rini carefully, though her forehead creased. "I'm Asanuma's cousin."

"Oh!" Motoki straightened. "I knew I must have seen you before! You look really familiar. He must have drawn a picture of you or something." He smiled at her.

"Um, Toki?" said Serena, rising on her tiptoes again to peer about. "Where's Lita? Isn't she working today?"

She didn't miss the downward sweep of Motoki's eyelashes.

"She went home early today," he said. Quietly.

Serena's lips twitched, about to say something – then she dug in her pocket. "Hey, Rini?" she said, pulling out some quarters. "D'you wanna go play some video games real quick?"

"I'm not stupid," Rini informed her. "If you want to speak in private, you can just say it."

Serena flushed. So much for that courtesy Rini had shown in front of her parents. "Sorry," she said. "Can I walk to Motoki real quick for just a few minutes? And I really do think you'd like Super Mario."

"Hmm," said Rini, but she took the coins from Serena and hopped down from the stool.

Serena watched her safely to a video game console before turning back to her blonde friend. He watched Rini, then looked back at her and sighed. She didn't say anything, just watched him gently.

"She's mad at me," Motoki said. A hand lifted to his hair, then fell back down without having done anything. "I guess. For not telling her. I don't know what else it would be. I should have told her."

"Why'd she leave today?" Serena asked.

"Because of those scumbags." Motoki flicked his eyes in the direction of a very noisy booth crammed with rumpled guys. "They knocked over a tray and got her all wet. And THEN they tried to make out like it was her fault!" His voice rose, but then he sighed, and his shoulders sagged. "But before I could do anything, she left."

Serena looked at her friend seriously. "Go after her, Toki. I'll watch the arcade."

"The thing is, Serena, I don't think she wants me to come after her." Motoki pushed away from the counter with his hands, looking away. His hands still gripped the edge of the faux marble, knuckles bleaching white. "We've barely spoken since... It's like…it's like…" He gave up. "I don't know what it's like. I've never felt like this before."

They both sat quietly for a moment. Serena tried to understand just why Lita was so angry with Motoki. He hadn't told her about his powers. But Serena hadn't told Lita about her powers, either, and Lita had forgiven _her_. She wasn't sure if Motoki would appreciate her telling him this, though. It might only make him more depressed. She sighed.

"Would you talk to her?" Motoki spoke in a mumble. She looked up. He wasn't looking at her.

"Of course I will," she said. Then she hesitated. "But – if it's – "

"If she doesn't want you to tell me, then don't, I mean," said Motoki hastily, his brows drawn upward in a heart-rending way. "But if she – if she…"

"I understand," Serena interrupted quietly. She reached out and squeezed his hand, pulling him into a hug. "Don't worry, Toki. I'm sure it'll all work out. Two world-class chefs like you and Lita are MEANT to be together."

She slid down off the stool and went over to Rini.

Motoki watched her go. His lips did not lift upward, the way a talk with Serena usually inspired him to do. Because he was thinking that if someone as perfectly matched as Serena and Darien weren't together, then he and Lita had no chance at all.

L

"Lita left early," Serena informed Rini as they exited the arcade. "So we're going to track her down at home."

"Aren't you going to call her first?" asked Rini.

"Well…why?" asked Serena. Then, covering her sudden discomfort – had she been really rude all these years, not calling her friends before she popped up on them? – she said, "And with what?"

"On her _cell phone_."

"Oh, Lita doesn't have a cell phone. I don't think. I'm pretty sure, anyway."

"She doesn't – " Rini began incredulously, then stopped. "Do YOU have one?"

"Nope." Serena watched Rini's shocked expression out of the corner of her eye. Well, if she was related to Asanuma (who owned a Porsche), then she probably owned not just one but ten cell phones. So Serena could see why she seemed so bewildered.

But she didn't quite understand why Rini asked, "What year were you born in?"

"Um," Serena said. "1990." Seeing Rini's mouth open, she added, "I'm a year younger than Asanuma, I'm 16." As Rini's face went through another strange series of contortions, Serena tilted her head and asked, "What about you, Rini? How old are you?"

For a minute, Rini was silent, though her face returned to smoothness instead of the furrowed brows it had worn. "Six," she said at last. "I'm six."

"You don't talk like a six year-old." The reproach in her own voice surprised Serena.

"You don't talk like a sixteen year-old," Rini retorted.

Serena breathed and looked away. Their walk continued in silence.

_How could someone related to Asanuma be so grumpy_? Serena thought. The child had mentioned that her parents were never home, and seemed very angry about it…that didn't tend to result in a very happy child, she supposed…after all, just look at Darien, he'd grown up in an orphanage, and he could make Oscar the Grump look like a Care Bear.

Serena's lips turned down further. She peeked at Rini from beneath her eyelashes again. The girl had seen them yesterday when Darien – when Darien had –

Heat seeped through her cheeks, accompanied by the omnipresent cold shame that she had grown so used to. She wouldn't have pushed away from him yesterday if Rini hadn't opened the door. Even with Miss Lanai's warning, even knowing everything she did, about the princess and the prophecy, and even knowing as perfectly well as she did that he didn't really love her because he couldn't, because she'd felt that edge of desperation and fury from him pounding at her through the rope while he kissed her, she would have let him kiss her, and maybe – maybe even have kissed him back.

_You're selfish. You're the most selfish person that ever existed _–

"I thought you said Motoki was Lita's boyfriend."

Serena started like a murderer caught with blood on their hands. She stared down at Rini, white-faced, and squeaked, "What?"

Rini frowned at her as though she could see right through her. "You said that guy was Lita's boyfriend. But _you_ were flirting with him."

"I was – " Serena blinked, color flowing back into her face as this impossibility was laid at her feet. Since when did kindergartners know about flirting, anyway? "No, I wasn't."

"You held his hand." Rini lifted her eyebrows.

Serena stared at the pink-haired child – the child who had just seen her kissing Darien yesterday – or rather, Darien kissing HER, but there was no way for Rini to know that. "I do not like Motoki like that. He's known me since I was a baby. He's like my brother. AND he's totally in love with Lita. So I'd really appreciate it if you didn't say stuff like that. Okay?" she ended, trying to soften her stiff tone.

"Do you like _him_? The blind man?"

Serena swallowed, trying to look blindsided again. "Do I – " she began.

"You were kissing him yesterday."

Serena sighed. She stopped, stepped over to the edge of the sidewalk, next to a building, and crouched down.

"That – that was a one-time thing." She looked straight into Rini's blue eyes. "It's never happening again. Darien and I are just friends…" Her eyes flickered away. "Really not even that." She looked back at Rini. "Okay?"

Rini's eyes bored into her, narrowed, as though scrutinizing an unsatisfactory reflection in the mirror. When she finally looked away, Serena stood back up.

"We need to decide what we're going to do with you tomorrow," she said brightly as they crossed the street to Lita's apartment building. She rang the intercom buzzer. "I've got to go to school."

The realization hit her that she would have to tell Miss Lanai – supposing that she was back – that she wouldn't be able to stay after school for a while. Although Asanuma should be back by tomorrow, shouldn't he?

She tried the buzzer again. "Lita?" she called.

"Maybe she doesn't want to talk to you."

Serena forced a smile. "Maybe not…" She let her finger fall away from the button.

"Serena?"

Serena snapped around. And there was –

"Lita!" she exclaimed.

Lita stopped at the foot of the building steps, pushing damp bangs away from her face to look up at them. Her shirt was a collage of fudge, ice cream, and ketchup. "What's up?"

"Well, I have someone I want you to meet." Serena looked down at Rini and was surprised by the wide-eyed expression on her face. "Um – Rini?"

"Hang on," said Lita, climbing the steps and nudging Serena to the side with a hip to unlock the door. "Let's go inside."

The elevator was just closing; Lita and Serena dashed forward madly to catch it – Lita's building had one of the slowest elevators in Juuban, and Lita lived on the twelfth floor. They caught it just in time and threw themselves in.

Then Serena realized – "Rini!" she cried, stabbing the 'open doors' button.

"I'm coming."

Serena peered out the elevator. Rini walked toward them at a far more sedate and dignified pace than their mad dash. Serena blushed a little.

"Well, get in here, Snail Girl," said Lita, not unkindly, but with the same tone she used on Buji (and, when he acted like a child – which was often – on Asanuma). She pressed the 'close doors' button as Rini stepped inside. "So – " Lita blinked at Rini's pink hair. "Oh. Wow."

Serena expected to see the grimace that was becoming quite familiar to her to make an appearance on Rini's features, but there was none. Instead, Rini eyed Lita carefully from Serena's side.

"Lita, this is Rini," Serena said. "She's Asanuma's cousin. She came to stay with the Ittos for a while, but they're not home, so she's staying with me for now. Rini, this is Lita. She knows Numa too."

"Hey." Lita stuck out a hand, stooping a little so Rini could reach.

Rini took it and shook it. Her small white fingers in Lita's long calloused ones fit together about as well as a princess and a scullery maid, but a scowl had yet to manifest on Rini's face.

"Pleased to meet you," she said.

"Right backatcha," said Lita. She let go of Rini's hand and straightened. "So, that's just like Asanuma, huh? Leaving without telling you?"

Serena watched Rini's lips compress. It made her think of how she herself pressed her lips together when she was trying to keep from crying.

But Rini just said, "Yeah."

The elevator door opened, and they entered Lita's plant-infested apartment. Serena watched the slight elevation of Rini's eyebrows with a little smile.

"Anyone want some cookies?" Lita said.

Serena looked at her.

"Silly me," said Lita drily. "What kind of question was that?" She glanced at Rini. "You want some, Rini?"

"Yes, please," said Rini, taking on in comparison to Serena's handful. She nibbled on it slowly.

"So, kiddo – " Lita put the plate of cookies on the coffee table, leaning back in the couch. "I gotta ask you – what's with your hair?"

Rini flushed. She looked at Serena. "It's a long story. We were practicing for Halloween."

Lita flicked a glance at Serena, pulling a leg up under her chin. Her smile, to Serena, seemed distracted – or rather too forced, as though she was trying to absorb herself in Rini to forget something else. "And how'd your dad react to it?"

Serena smiled. She didn't want to make Rini uncomfortable with the way her dad's eyes had bulged, then narrowed.

"Actually…" she began tentatively. "I was wondering if we could dye it brown…Rini." She added, "It would make you less noticeable to certain…people."

She glanced out of Lita's large window, at the rain that still pattered against the glass.

Rini shrugged.

"Lemme see your hair?" Lita said, setting down her mug of tea and leaning forward.

Rini stiffened, then bent her head forward. Lita peered at the dark streaks radiating from her scalp into the cotton candy pink hair.

"Hmm," she said, and sat back. "What color's your hair really, Rini?"

"Brown," said Rini. "Like mud."

Her eyes widened suddenly, as she realized what she'd said, and what color Lita's hair was.

"Like _chocolate,_ thank you very much," said Lita, kicking the child lightly in the leg. She looked at Serena. "I've got some brown hair dye. I could do her hair."

Serena's brow furrowed at she looked back at her friend. "You have hair dye?"

"Yeah…" Lita rubbed her head, looking away. "I'll tell you later."

Serena sat back in the loveseat cushion, puffing her cheeks out. No one was telling her anything lately – the boys and their powers, Darien and the atmosphere, Sammy and going out with Mika now, Lita and her hair… It was her own fault, of course, for being closeted up with Miss Lanai all the time…but that didn't keep it from stinging.

Lita drained her mug. "Want to do it now?"

"Yes, please," said Rini instantly.

L

"No, no, no!" Lita stepped between Rini and Serena as she took Rini's head from the sink. "You've got to WAIT, Serena."

"But Lita…" Serena pouted.

"There's cheesecake in the fridge," said Lita.

Serena disappeared with a poof.

Lita chuckled and led Rini into her bathroom, closing the door behind them.

"What are you going to do?" asked Rini from beneath the towel turban.

"We're going to blow-dry your hair," said Lita. She frowned, planting a hand on her hip as she saw her own reflection in the mirror. "Actually, I could use a blow-dry, too."

"It's raining outside," Rini pointed out. "There's no point in drying my hair. It'll just get wet again."

"True," conceded Lita. She grinned a little, digging out a bulky hair-dryer and pointing it at her own bangs. "But hey, if you want your first glimpse of yourself with your brown hair to look like a drowned cat, be my guest."

Rini scowled a little. "Fine," she said in an airy, 'I'm just indulging _you_' voice.

"Thought so," said Lita. "Close your eyes."

They emerged from the bathroom ten or so minutes later.

"Woaoh!" Serena mrghmphled around a mouthful of cheesecake. She smiled, swallowing. "It looks really pretty, Rini!" And it was true. While the pink hair had made Rini's face look sickly and almost jaundiced, the nutmeg brown balanced it out, letting her big blue eyes rest easily in her face and drawing out her wealth of long black eyelashes. Serena laughed. "And now you look like Lita's little sister!"

"Making me related to Asanuma?" said Lita, brows flying up. "No thanks! No offense, Rini."

"None taken," Rini said.

Lita frowned, wrapping the cord back around the hairdryer, and looked at Serena. "When's he coming back, anyway?"

"I thought he was supposed to be back tomorrow," said Serena. "Right?"

Lita shrugged. She looked at them, still holding the hairdryer limply in her hand. "So, um…hey, Rini, is it cool if me and Serena talk in private for a minute?"

"Okay." Rini got up.

"The remote's on the coffee table," Lita called after her. "And help yourself to anything in the fridge!"

She looked back at Serena, who was staring past her at the bedroom doorway that Rini had walked out of.

"She likes you," said Serena softly. Then she turned fully around and looked Lita in the eye. "So. Motoki?"

Lita sighed. "Sheesh."

"He's worried, you know. And confused." Serena perched on Lita's bed as Lita closed the bedroom door. Her blue eyes followed Lita's progress across the room as she sat against the wall, next to a planter containing a mini rain tree. "Why are you mad at him?"

"I'm not…_mad_ at him…" Lita thumped her head against the wall. "I don't know. Maybe." She changed the subject, jerking her chin toward the door. "What's with Lemony out there? She's really related to Asanuma?"

"So she said," Serena said simply, letting Lita change the subject. She hesitated, mentally cutting several details from the story of Rini's arrival. "I was in the park the other night…" She winced; it wasn't so hard to leave the attacks on her out of the story, but leaving Darien out was another story. "Tuxedo Mask was there, too…we were talking," she said quickly, firmly.

Lita said nothing, merely listened with her emerald-colored eyes wary.

"And something fell on top of us – I guess she was hiding in the tree," said Serena. "It was Rini. She was all bloodied up, and she ran away from us. We ran after her and caught her at the rose maze…" She winced, thinking about it. "She really didn't trust us. Dar – Shields didn't trust her, he thought she felt like a youma, so he wasn't very…nice, I guess. Anyway, she used Asanuma in a threat, saying that if we did anything to her, Asanuma would burn us into ashes – "

Lita sucked in a breath. "He _told_?"

"Well, wait," said Serena quickly, sitting forward on the bed. "You had people who knew about your powers when you first got them. But if Numa didn't know, Lita, and if you can't control your powers, if they just jump out sometimes, then he totally could have revealed it to his cousin by accident – "

"You speak from experience, I'm guessing," said Lita. Her foot tapped against the floor. "But still, he should have told us that someone knew, then."

"With as angry as everyone was right then?" said Serena. "He and D – Shields had nearly killed each other; you weren't talking to Motoki – and I just told them they weren't any of my business." She winced, wondering how she could have acted so coldly to her friends.

"Anyway." Lita said. "On with the story."

"Well, so we introduced ourselves – I was transformed," Serena added. "She said she was Numa's cousin and that her parents had sent her to stay with Numa's family. We told her that they just left on a trip, and – well, she seemed like she was about to cry, Lita – "

"Wait a second," said Lita. "If you had to tell her that Asanuma wasn't home, then why was she hiding in a tree?"

Serena gasped. "Oh my God! You're right!" She slid down Lita's silky bedspread, landing on the floor across from Lita. "Except – you know, she never _said _she was hiding in a tree, I just thought that since – "

"Well, go on," urged Lita, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "We can figure out what it means after you've showed me the whole picture."

"No, no, you know what, something makes sense," Serena shook her head. "I took her home, right? As Serena – I told her Serena was Sailor Moon, and I went off and detransformed and came back – "

Lita rolled her eyes a little. "I'm sure nobody could have seen through that."

"It was split second," whined Serena. "I was panicked! Anyway, I took her home and camped her out on my floor. I fell asleep, and then I woke up an hour later, and she was gone – "

"Where was Shields at this point?"

A little of the sparkle fled Serena's eyes. "In my tree."

"Okay," Lita winced internally. "Go on."

"I went out to look for her – I didn't wake him up," said Serena reluctantly. "I found her outside Numa's house. We started back to my house, and then it started to thunder. But then lightning started without any thunder to go with it, and it was all sorts of strange colors."

"Yeah, I woke up to that." Lita's eyes glowed. "It wasn't lightning."

"I didn't think so," said Serena, regarding her friend. She had suspected, of course, after what Darien had said about the atmospheric disturbance, but this confirmation from Sailor Jupiter, who could control lightning, cemented it. "A youma showed up. It went after Rini. Tuxedo Mask showed up, took it out."

"He didn't try to interrogate it?" said Lita indignantly.

"He tried," said Serena. She paused. "It turned into powder. The lightning and thunder stopped; it started to rain. We went to Darien's apartment, let Rini get cleaned up." She was so engrossed in her story that she did not notice she had reverted to saying 'Darien' instead of 'Shields.' "Darien told me that some sort of huge thing had showed up in the atmosphere. That must have been what caused the thunder and lightning."

"And this rain for the past two days?" Lita motioned out the window. "Did it cause this, too?"

"No." Serena smiled unhappily. "That's Darien's doing. He's rained the thing out of the atmosphere. Now he's trying to make sure he drowns it out."

"He – he can – " The rain tree beside Lita had begun to shake, and suddenly roots shot out of the planet, cracking the ceramic with a sound like a gunshot. Serena's eyes shot to Lita in worry.

"I don't know why I'm surprised he can control the weather," muttered Lita sardonically. "That's like a piece of cake after stopping a comet, I suppose…" She looked up at Serena, brows digging into her eyes fiercely. "So are we going to check this thing out? Wherever it landed, I mean."

"Well…" Serena's hand twisted unconsciously in her lap. "That's partly why I came to talk to you. I…don't really want to talk to Darien alone. But – " She lifted her head. "Something does need to be done."

"Damn straight it does," said Lita. But she eyed Serena. "You wanna talk about it?"

Serena smiled wanly. "No."

"But you need to talk about it," concluded Lita. "C'mon, spill to Onee-sama."

"Onee-sama?" This strangled a grin from Serena. "Since when? I become a Senshi before you; that makes _you_ MY imouto-chan!"

Lita peeled congealed ketchup from her shirt. "We'll talk when your head reaches my chin," she smirked. She sobered suddenly, looking up. "I'm staying with you tonight."

"Why?" Serena tilted her head.

"This Rini kid – Shields thought she was a youma, and her story doesn't match up – AND youma are after her." Lita shook her head. "Once Asanuma gets back, we'll be able to find out what the real story is, but until then, I'm not leaving you alone with her."

Serena felt a stab of anger, the same as before. No one thought she was capable of defending herself; everyone pushed her back, and didn't trust her judgment. If Darien would listen to her when she said that she was a danger to the princess, then they wouldn't be in this horrible, nasty mess right now; they could still be friends, and all this wouldn't have happened –

"Lita, I can take care of myself," she said. "I appreciate it, really, I do, knowing that you care about me. But Rini would get suspicious if you stayed with us, and she already acts stiff enough without that."

Lita eyed her for a moment. Then, abruptly, she said, "You said she liked me, right? So let her stay with me until Asanuma gets back."

Serena's eyes widened. Her mouth opened. "Well…"

"Well what?" said Lita. "Why not? You basically said yourself she doesn't trust you. Besides, you have to deal with your parents asking questions. I don't."

"Yes, but – but how would we explain why she should stay with you?" stalled Serena without understanding why she was stalling – barely even realizing that she _was _stalling. "I mean, Sailor Moon told her that _I_ was her friend, and that was why she would stay with me."

"So I'll tell her I'm Sailor Jupiter, and she's going to stay with me so I can protect her since there were youma after her." Lita shrugged. "If she knows about Numa's powers, she'd end up finding out about me, anyway."

Serena's lips were parted. She realized this, abruptly, and shut them. "Um…" she said slowly – reluctantly. "I guess – well – "

"Here, let's go ask her." Lita got to her feet, hauling Serena up with a hand as she did so. She opened the door. "Hey, Rini."

Rini was on the couch, not watching the TV, but with a book in her lap. She looked up.

"Hey, we've got a proposition for you," said Lita in her straight-out way. She crossed her arms, leaning against the door jamb. "Serena told me about that youma that came after you the other day."

"Oh?" Rini's expression did not change as she closed the book, but the glance she shot at Serena was expression enough. Serena had been the target of enough of those looks in the past year to recognize one when she saw one – it was the look sent at a traitor.

"None of that," said Lita. She pushed away from the wall. "What we were thinking is that since Sailor Moon's not around right now but you need protection from these youma, you should stay with me."

Rini looked at Lita. "I've seen you fight," she said slowly, "But drunkards and those youma are opposite ends of the spectrum."

A puzzled expression had creased Lita's features at Rini's first words, but now a grin worked its way onto her face. "Really?" she said. "I haven't noted that big a difference between them, myself." She inclined her head. "Granted, I do have superpowers…"

Serena rolled her eyes despite her hard-to-pinpoint anxiety. "Could you be any _more _melodramatic?"

Rini's eyes darted between them. She crossed her arms and looked at Lita. "You won't mind if I ask you to prove it."

Lita's grin widened. "I would have been disappointed if you hadn't." She lifted a hand. "Jupiter Power!"

With a dull gnaw of jealousy, Serena watched the green lights wash over Lita. _She_ didn't have to worry about someone sensing her every time she transformed. Rini liked her. Motoki was in love with her – AND he didn't have a soulmate. The disparities burrowed into her, wriggling beneath her skin. She swallowed back her disgust with herself and tried to squash the envious parasites. But they lay slimy and putrid against her bones.

"So." Now Sailor Jupiter, Lita cocked her head down at the little girl whose hair matched hers. "What do you say? You gonna stay with me?"

Serena looked away. Because of that, she missed the look that Rini flicked at her. And because of that, Rini felt confirmed in her suspicions: that Serena didn't want her staying with her.

She looked back at Sailor Jupiter. "Yes, thank you."

L

"My Lord!" A sopping figure dropped into the bridge.

A caped figure turned, taking his gaze from the crashing, iron-grey waves outside the viewport. "Have you determined the cause?"

"Both the fore and aft side powering crystals have been shattered from the impact of our crash." The man knelt before the prince, hand in a fist over his chest. Rain dripped from his hair to fall in a puddle around his sovereign's boots. "Three of the chambers filled immediately with water, and two more have almost filled as we speak, sir. Her Ladyship's droids have begun work to solder the breaches, but the rain hampers out efforts. The crystals we have not touched." He bent his head lower. "What are your orders, sir?"

The prince turned his head from the kneeling man to the being hovering at his shoulder. "Can you repair the crystals?"

The cloaked being bowed its head. "Not without energy, Your Highness."

From behind him, a dark-haired man appeared. "The ship must be moved. Unless we take action, we shall be submerged within less than two hours, brother. I would suggest the nearby isl – "

"We have been detected," the caped man said to the being beside him. The being lowered its head in confirmation. "We have nowhere, then, to move to. That damned – "

"Brother," began the dark-haired man, his voice lifting. "We must – "

"Silence, Sapphire!" roared the caped man.

"If you will forgive me, sire…" The being beside him spoke. "I require energy to repair the crystals, but it is no large matter for me to open a pocket vortex from which you could operate for now."

"Do it."

The being lifted his billowing sleeves. Wind howled, water whooshed –

And they were gone.

L

Darien bolted up.

Sweat clung like suffocating plastic wrap to his face. He gasped, lurching forward, and fell heavily forward onto the coffee table as his shins cracked against its hard edge. He heard glass crack.

He felt warm liquid on him, a sting where salty sweat entered the wound, but his hand would not reach for the Golden Crystal in his subspace pocket. He lay against the cool surface of the coffee table, feeling sweat drip from his pores like rain.

It was not a cleansing rain. Salt coated his skin and hardened like a gritty prison. Only the vague thought that something was missing penetrated his semi-awareness, pinching at him every once in a while like a fish nudging at a man who is stranded floating, half-submerged, in the ocean.

Another vague, invisible thought poked at him…dehydration…thirsty…salt…he needed to hydrate…but it floated vaguely away again, in the same way that a man will float away from a ship because he does not lift his head to see it.

L

The three girls went back to Serena's house to get Rini's new clothes. They greeted Mrs. Tsukino, who had returned from the flea market, on their way through the kitchen, and informed her that Rini was going to take a turn staying with Lita for a while. Mrs. Tsukino feigned hurt, pretending that she was so sad that her cooking hadn't been good enough for Rini, now that she was running away to live with Lita "Emeril" Kino.

With a final teasing comment from Mrs. Tsukino, a laughing Lita left the house with Rini at her side. Serena waved, smiling, until she couldn't see them anymore, then went up to her room. Rini's blanket-nest was still there; Lita had a guest room at her apartment with an actual bed for Rini.

Serena flopped onto her bed, face in her pillow.

The rain pattered against her window.

She curled into a ball.

_"There is an aura about you, Serena Tsukino, that draws being in."_

She rolled over. Face pressed against her blanket, she rummaged beneath her mattress. She pulled out her sketchbook.

She propped it against her pillow and put her head on her arms. She opened it.

There was Ami, and there was Rei, and there was her mom, and her dad…Sammy in that picture, and Lita in this one, and here one of Asanuma. And one she had drawn of Toki and Lita one day after she saw them standing together looking out a window. And one of Buji, a silent laugh curving his mouth. And here was Rei again, but with Asanuma…and one of Mina, in her regal fuku, her eyes sad as she looked over her shoulder at the three Sailor Senshi sketched in rough, blurry lines behind her.

Serena traced her fingers down the long, graceful shapes. Determined eyes stared back at her, smooth faces and capable hands. Her fingers left streaks of grey graphite down their beautiful faces as she fingered them tentatively, timidly.

"You're being stupid!" Serena tried to laugh at herself. "Why does it matter? She didn't like you, Serena, it's better for her to be with someone she at least likes! Why would you want to make someone be with you when they don't like you? And no wonder she doesn't like you, you only risked her life…"

_"That little girl, you risked her life, too. She could have died! And why…"_

"Anyway!" she babbled loudly, as though to drown out her own thoughts. "Why are you being jealous of Lita? You shouldn't be jealous, there's nothing to be jealous of, everyone is their own person and special in their own way – your life is better than most people's, you don't have anything to complain about, really, you don't have a right to… Stop!" She sat up, yelling at herself, as tears scrambled down her face. "I'm tired of crying! Stop it! Stop it!"

Was she really this weak? What had happened to all her resolution? Where had her determination to stay away from Darien, her determination to learn a new attack before Miss Lanai returned, dissipated to?

Serena swung her legs over the bed. She rubbed her sleeve across her face. She crept downstairs and out the door.

"I'm going out, Mom!" she called toward the kitchen as she reached the front door. She yanked a jacket from the hook, drawing the hood over her head. She tried not to think of Darien. "Rini forgot some stuff! I'll probably have dinner at Lita's, don't wait for me, bye!"

She nearly slammed the door behind her in her haste and hurried out of the yard, down the street. She made a beeline for the park. Only after two blocks did she realize that the rain had stopped; she pulled back her hood and looked up at the patchy, thinning clouds and clearing sky with worried eyes. But she had forbidden herself from thinking of Darien for now; the time would come to speak to him, and she would ask him then, but no sooner.

Now the thought of her unidentified attacker also returned to her; she swatted it away like a fly. Let them come, whoever they were! In fact, let youma come, too. She may not have materialized any new attacks, but she certainly was not the weakling that everyone still thought her to be.

These belligerent thoughts crackled through her mind as she turned the corner to enter the park and was nearly bowled over.

The child tumbled to the ground, and Serena bent to help him up, but he spared her not a glance, lunging to his feet and taking off with rattling pants. She watched him go, then nearly fell over herself as another weight crashed into her. She spun.

"Onee-san!" cried the little girl, grabbing her jacket. "Help! My mommy – my mommy – " She burst into tears. Serena's blood chilled as she lifted her eyes from the little girl to the playground half-hidden by the wall of hedges.

Above the jungle gym, she saw the telltale sparkle of sucked energy, and scanning the ground, she could see, poking out from behind the slides and tunnels, motionless feet and hands.

Serena pulled the child away from her and looked into her eyes. "Go. Follow the other kids and don't come back until a police officer comes and tells you it's okay, alright?" When the little girl just stared up at her, tears pouring from her eyes, Serena squeezed her hands. "_Alright_?"

"But – my mommy – "

"Sailor Moon will save your mommy," said Serena. "But your mommy wants you safe. _Go_."

With another sniffle, the child ran off, joining the diaspora of children who had clustered far away, near the ice cream shop at the edge of the boulevard. Serena scanned around her, finding that this section of the park had emptied of people, all fleeing in fear from the monster, and stepped inside the hedges, out of sight. She crept quietly to the jungle gym, pressing herself against one of the slides. She peered through a crack.

The youma was very normal-looking as far as youma went – totally humanoid in shape, even lacking the unnaturally large bosom that they usually sported. The body was entirely black, from the fingertips to the toes, with a faceless white head that had only a black hole where the mouth should have been.

The glowing strands of energy that she had seen before streamed in a steady current from the prone bodies to that gaping hole.

Serena realized, almost as though from a separate awareness, that she didn't have a communicator. How strange a feeling it was, to be facing a youma on her own again; despite the fact that she had not spoken, or even seen, either of them in months, she felt a nearly unshakable compulsion that she ought to call Ami and Rei.

Embedded with this feeling was the guilt of not calling anyone to help her. Over and over, Luna had drilled into the three Senshi that they did not dive into a fight without first calling the other Senshi to alert them. But there was no one to alert, no way to alert them – Serena's fingers tightened around the cool brooch already in her fist and despite the all-too-acute awareness that Darien would sense her and come running, she felt a rush of liberation. She whispered, "Moon Prism Power!"

Energy burst out of the circle of metal, chasing her blood up her arteries – but something was wrong.

She doubled over, her gorge convulsing. Nausea slid slimy fingers into her insides and squeezed them like dough.

Dimly, a separate part of her mind realized that this feeling did not originate from her…the realization pulled at her, grabbing weakly at her like a child struggling to pull up a much heavier adult from the cliff from which she hung. Her fingers lost contact with the thread that had somehow come to wrap around her fingers, clinging like a static-charged dryer sheet – her eyes popped open. Sweat streamed into them.

The permeating fatigue had felt as though her skeleton had been melted out of her body and squeezed out through her pores. But what cut into her even more terrifyingly was the lack of flavor, the lack of reaction, from Darien at the sense of her transformation. There was no answering surge of irritation or worry…just a vague, endless unawareness.

What happened next was a blur. She had a vague recollection of dusting the youma with her tiara and of the glowing energy exploding from its ashes to whoosh back into the children. Then she found herself landing on his balcony.

Nerves that did not seem to belong to her pulled her, one leg at a time, down from the balcony railing and to the half-open glass doors. They pulled her inside.

Then she spotted the prone body lying on the coffee table in a puddle of red, and her floating spirit zoomed back into her body like a nail driving/hammered into a too-small hole.

She felt into a crouch and grabbed Darien's shoulders. He was soaked in sweat, every bit of him was positively pooled with perspiration. It dripped between her fingers and made his skin slide from her grip.

Some of the blood was from his hands, and one of his wrists had gotten cut. One corner and part of the edge of the elegant glass coffee table had been broken off, and it was against this jagged edge that his face had rested, centimeters away from his eyeball. She lifted him carefully, nearly crying in fear every time the sweat made him slip in her grip back toward the jagged glass (like a black hole pulling him in?).

"Darien," she said over and over. "Wake up. Wake up!"

She scrabbled for the rope, which was no longer a rope but a thread, the fraying thread that had clung like a cobweb when she transformed, and all it gave her was a dull ocean of nothing and no taste of cold, fiery Darien at all. He would not wake he would not wake how would he heal how would he not die –

He lay on the couch now, for she had grunted and heaved him up there and then, crying, pushed the coffee table further away, all the way across the room, for now that he was face-up she could see the long gash the broken table edge had made down his face, dark red and clotting but otherwise identical to the line of gray that now cut down the drawing of his face in her sketchbook at home…she found herself in the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet where he kept the first aid kit, but it was no longer on the lowest shelf where he had kept it so she could reach it and patch up when she tripped over things; she saw its blue bottom poking out on the very top shelf, and she climbed onto the slippery counter to reach it, and ran back to the living room.

Then stopped.

He had lost blood but not that much blood; the puddle was tinier than the long shadows of the setting sun had made it seem, and she had seen him bloodier than this without even staggering much less unconscious; what was wrong with him was not blood loss but something else…

A ray of the melting sun bounced from the window onto his face, igniting the sweaty sheen on his face into a mask of light. Sailor Moon's eyes honed in on it, then darted to the window…to the shrinking clouds that had ceased to pour rain, and she remembered one of the last topics that they had covered in biology last year, the excretory system…

Almost unconsciously, Sailor Moon peeled off her glove. Slowly, as though hypnotized, her finger trembled forward to touch the sheen of moisture on the unbloodied side of Darien's face.

Just as slowly, she brought the finger back to her mouth, her eyes still on the glimmering cheekbones, and licked her fingertip.

Salt.

There was no salt in Darien's sweat.

Her thoughts crept to the pouring rain of the day before, the perspiration on his pallid face as he told her shortly that had had the storm under control.

"You dummy," she whispered, throat tighter than a boa constrictor's coils. She got up, ran to the refrigerator, and yanked it open, only to be greeted by rows of Mountain Dew cans and a six-pack of iced coffees. She slammed it shut and went through the freezer, checked all the cabinets, but nothing; she grabbed glasses from the cabinet and filled them at the kitchen sink, then ran back and kneeled beside him, lifting his hot, drenched head onto her lap. She part his lips carefully with a gloved finger and tried to pour the water slowly, carefully into his mouth despite her shaking fingers. Some went down, but most dribbled down his cheeks to soak into her skirt, and she tried again, and again, watching in despair, and even if she did eventually get a whole glass's first down him, it wouldn't be enough; he needed sports drinks, something with electrolytes –

Her burning eyes lit up, and she leaned forward, over him, too worried even to feel abashed as she brushed her hands over his hips, looking for that telltale catch in the fabric of space…aha! She found it, plunging her hand into Darien's SubSpace pocket and feeling around for the familiar shape of the fruit juice bottles he had once carried around for her hoping against hope…

Her fingers found none of the round shapes, only sharp objects like the spiky Golden Crystal, which sent a feverish pulse up her arm when she brushed it (as though begging? No, not begging, exactly), and the teeth of several blades…she withdrew her bleeding fingers and clenched them into a fist, not knowing what to do. If Darien was in a hospital, they'd hook him up to an IV to reverse the fluid loss…

Wait. Her mind sped backward (clearing suddenly?). Her hand fisted in Darien's wet t-shirt.

This wasn't a suspicious, unexplainable youma wound. It was dehydration. And now that Darien's Golden Crystal was outside his body, sparks wouldn't explode if they put a needle in him…

She lunged forward once again, this time reaching into Darien's regular pockets. She withdrew his slim silver cell phone and dialed 911.

L


	14. Chapter 14

A/**N:** I would like to especially thank Renegade-452 – who has left me the most marvelous, specific reviews. They REALLY encourage me – and rose tornado, who has given me really helpful advice. Please tell me if I'm doing any better!

**Disclaimer:** I would write another Extended Essay if it meant that I could own Sailor Moon. For anyone who knows what an Extended Essay is, this means I REALLY want Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Fourteen: Mirror

L

Sunday night's eleven o'clock news ended. Haruka clicked off the TV with the remote as Michiru stretched around her pillow.

"The youma attacks have started again." Michiru's velvet voice came through the darkness of the living room. "Do we tell her not to transform if she comes across one?"

"Of course," replied Haruka. "The Earthlings aren't our concern."

They sat in the dark room, their night vision gradually adjusting.

"She may not listen to us."

"Then we'll make her."

"Mmm… what about the youma? What if they interfere?"

"They won't interfere with us."

"I wouldn't be so sure," murmured Michiru, glancing out the window at the blooming nightflowers. The rain that had poured down so hard certainly had not escaped her notice…and it had not washed away her concern about the new youma, either. "I would feel more comfortable if we knew why they were here."

"We'll ask Pluto when she comes again." Haruka rose and stretched, her bones popping. "Come on."

They climbed the stairs quietly and paused at Rei's door. Gone were the days when she had propped a chair between the doorknob and floor; Michiru pushed it open unimpeded. The waft of hot, dry air that met her face made her blink, as always.

She leaned against the doorjamb, watching the shadows that danced across Rei's walls. "How much longer do you think it will be?"

Haruka too watched their charge, her hair flickering from black to red to an aureole of flames and back again. She pulled at her collar as sweat beaded on her forehead from the heat.

"Not long." She pulled the door closed, leaving them in darkness again. "Not long at all."

L

Motoki found himself alone at lunch on Monday. After he had waited fifteen minutes at the table in the cafeteria and Lita hadn't shown, his first thought was that she had been angrier yesterday than he'd thought, and she was going to dump him. Despite this terrible thought, he stuffed his lunch into his bag and went to check the tree. No one was there.

On the way back to the cafeteria he walked past Miss Lanai's room, not planning to walk in or anything, but the door was locked and a piece of paper over the window. Asanuma was still away; he'd texted Toki's cell asking him to pick up his homework for him, and Darien hadn't been in class today – not that he ever ate lunch with them anymore, anyway.

Motoki turned the corner dejectedly, not really looking where he was going, and collided with someone.

"Sorry!" he exclaimed, rushing to help the woman he'd sent sprawling. Her youthful appearance widened his eyes – he would have sworn that she was a fellow senior if a) he'd never seen her before in his life and b) she'd been wearing a school uniform instead of her sweater top and skirt. "Are you alright?"

"Yes – " But the hiss the woman let out as Motoki touched her hand to help her up didn't match her reply. She withdrew her hand quickly, and he averted his eyes, feeling quite rude. "Thank you very much."

Her voice was warm, removing the sting of her hiss.

"Hangnail," she explained, fluttering her long fingers at him. Her honey-blonde hair, a few shades lighter than Serena's, reminded him of Minako Aino's.

"Who are you?" Motoki blurted out. Then he blushed.

She laughed. "I'm Miss Kaioh. I'm a substitute teacher for Miss Lanai." She walked past him to the door he'd just left and unlocked it. He noticed for the first time the bottle of water in her hand.

"Do you know where Serena Tsukino is?" His words jumped off his tongue again without his permission. He hastened to clarify himself. "She's in seventh period, she usually eats lunch in here – "

"Yes. I know Serena." Miss Kaioh had lifted her head. "Are you her boyfriend?"

"N-no!" sputtered Motoki. He smiled weakly, realizing that she wouldn't understand his violent reaction. "We're friends. I have a girlfriend." _Although maybe not for long_, he thought unhappily.

"Ah," said Miss Kaioh. "Well, I have not seen Serena today, but when I do, I will inform her that her friend – "

"Motoki," said Motoki when he realized why she had paused delicately.

"Motoki is looking for her," finished the substitute teacher, giving him a smile that intensified his embarrassed blush.

"Oh, I'm not – that is – okay, thanks." Motoki gave up. Then, clearing his throat, he turned around and headed back down the hallway. He didn't hear the door click shut, and he had the paranoid feeling that she was watching him walk down the hall. His ears burned red.

Walking down the hallway, Motoki decided to do something that he rarely did. He skipped the rest of the school day and left campus in search of Lita.

It was time, he knew, to clean the air. He'd done something that clearly bothered Lita, and he needed to find out what it was so that he could fix it, before he ended up like his friends. If she rejected him, so be it – he sniffed.

He didn't think that flowers would hurt, though, so he picked up a potted snapdragon along the way. The salesperson assured him that they had romantic meaning and not any weird 'platonic love' symbolism, just in case Lita checked.

When he reached her building, he buzzed the intercom.

There was no answer. He waited several minutes, then turned back down the stairs, trying to convince himself that she wasn't home instead of that she was choosing not to answer his ring –

Then he spotted, on the street, a light brown head bobbing at a height that could only belong to Lita.

"Hey!" He bounded down the steps, clutching the snapdragon. "Lita!"

She looked up, and he put on an extra burst of speed to catch up to her before she decided to rush in the opposite direction, but staying far back enough when he stopped that she couldn't reach him should she decide to kick him.

Then he realized, staring at her bright green eyes, that he had no clue what he had planned to say.

"Um?" he said. His eyes flicked away from hers, toward the ground, and they landed on a brown-haired little girl standing beside Lita. His eyes widened. "_Rini_?"

The kid's hair had changed, though! Now it was the same color as Lita's!

"You two know each other?"

Motoki looked back at Lita, regathering his thoughts. "Yeah… Serena brought her in the arcade the other day – " He stopped himself before he said 'when you walked out,' and said hastily instead, "Where is Serena, anyway?" and he looked behind them as though expecting Serena to pop out from behind Lita. "Wasn't she watching Rini?"

"I took her for the day." Now it was Lita avoiding his eyes.

He felt his shoulders slumping and forced them back up. "Um – do you want to do something? I've got the day off… You, too, Rini, you wanna see a movie?"

Rini said nothing, just looked up at him, then back up at Lita. That left him no choice but to look at Lita again, who was staring past him, her hand clamped on her hip.

"Uh…you know, not today," Lita said. "Got…stuff to do. Made a mess in the kitchen, you see – "

Motoki's hands tightened around the potted snapdragon in his hand, and its inflexibility suddenly reminded him of his conviction to get this uncertainty ironed out today. Of course, that had been before Asanuma's cousin entered the equation, but… He reached out. "Lita, we need to talk."

Because he was stubbornly staring at her face this time, he saw the flash of her eyes. With a movement almost too quick for his eyes to follow, she snapped her arm away from his hand. "Not TONIGHT, I said."

Motoki pulled back, eyes wide.

A passer-by in a business suit paused on the sidewalk and leaned toward Lita, his eyes suspiciously on Motoki. "Ma'am, do you need help – "

"No, I DON'T," Lita nearly snapped. "Rini, come on." With iron chill in her voice, she stalked up the front steps of her building and slammed the door shut behind herself and a silent Rini.

The man looked at Motoki, then at the snapdragon in his arms.

Motoki met his eyes for a moment, then turned away. He felt slightly disoriented, as though he had fallen asleep in the middle of a movie and woken up just in time to see the end. What had he missed?

L

"What do you want to eat?" Lita yanked open the refrigerator door. She didn't look at Rini; she didn't want to see the look on the little girl's face.

"Anything is fine."

Lita tapped her foot. Pain was streaking through her temples, the beginning of a headache. "Don't give me this cordial crap. You've got to want something."

"…spaghetti."

"Spaghetti?" Lita tried to figure out why this seemed ironic and failed. She shrugged and cracked her shoulders, then leaned into the pantry. She reached for the remote to turn on the TV as she pulled out the noodles.

"You like cartoons?" She didn't give Rini a chance to reply; she began flipping through the channels. Soap opera, infomercial, the news, Star Trek rerun, dubbed Chinese movie, the news, informer –

She stabbed the channel button back.

"Another youma attack, the third of the day, Kyoko," the lady reporter was saying. "This is as close as we have been able to get without being affected by the …" Her words slurred, her eyes rolled, and she suddenly crumpled on the ground, accompanied with the crashing of the camera.

Lita swore.

"Ah…please stand by." The screen reverted to the two anchors, looking worried. "Viewers are advised to stay away from Fifth Street and Main in the Minato ward - "

Lita swung around, loping to the glass doors at the end of the living room.

"You – stay here." She thrust her finger at Rini.

Lita leapt out the window, fuku materializing as she went. She landed on the rooftop across from her building and took off in a run.

She heard the screams before she reached them – the newscasters must have caught the attack really quickly for people to still be conscious. Sailor Jupiter hopped the nine stories to the ground and took in the three youma, the fumbling pedestrians, and a blonde Senshi before she landed in a crouch on the sidewalk.

"Not in the mood," she told the youma she'd just landed in front of. And indeed, she really wasn't – except for when the electricity surged in her palm, it was like the explosion of flavor when she bit into a cherry-filled truffle. A vicious, baretoothed grin erupted on her face.

She shoved the electricity into the youma's abdomen. It flew backward. She bounded after it, brushing past a whirling Sailor Moon as she went.

"How was the math test?" she yelled to her as she dodged the youma's swinging arm and slapped it with one of her own. These youma were plain, flat-chested, and didn't seem to have any particular special attacks. She kicked it in the crotch, just out of curiosity, but nope, from the way it didn't double over, it didn't seem to have a gender, either. She powered up another electricity ball and slammed it into the hockey-goalie mask that was the youma's face. It crumbled into ash.

She turned.

Just in time to see Moon slide her glowing sword neatly into the youma's skull. She glanced away, looking for the other youma. There had been three.

"Watch your back," she called to Moon. "Contestant Number Three's hiding."

Moon's sword shrank back into a tiara in her hand, and she pushed it back onto her forehead, just above a nasty bruise that was beginning to darken her cheek. "No, it's not. I got it."

"You did, did you?" Now that she looked for it, Jupiter saw the third pile of ash, near the bus bench. The grin faded from her face a bit. No more? "It's handy, that sword of yours."

"Uh-huh…" Serena nodded but seemed distracted. Jupiter eyed her, the grin fading completely. But so did the headache that had pounded at her temples.

Suddenly, Serena's head snapped to the side. She walked forward, coming close to Lita.

"What, is someone hurt - ?" Jupiter began, turning to follow Moon. Everyone had fled by now. She watched Serena, frowning, walk around one of the the trees that lined the sidewalk. She tilted her head up to peer into a tree, but it was a small one, and Lita didn't see anything in it, not even a bird.

She checked its base, remembering when the Kisenian Blossom clones had disguised themselves as flowers, but there was only a tame-looking white flower at the tree roots, not one of the spiky bizarre pink ones.

"What is it?" Jupiter asked at least, a little unnerved by the glazed look of Moon's eyes.

Serena took a moment to answer. "…nothing," she said, stepping back. She blinked, looked at Jupiter, her eyes clearer. "Where's Rini?"

"I left her at home. You think I should've brought her?"

Moon frowned. "I don't think so…these people are after her."

"They don't seem smart enough to breathe, much less recognize a kid." Jupiter toed one of the ash piles doubtfully. "They're different, these things. Where'd they come from? Not Beryl."

"I don't know. They're different from the first one. That one had the big chest, you know? And colorful." But she sounded distracted.

"Well." Lita glanced down the street. "People'll come soon. Wanna come over and talk? I think Rini's getting bored with me."

"I can't. I've got to…"

Lita remembered that Darien could sense when Serena transformed. Incredible that he hadn't already shown up, but of course Serena wanted to avoid that. The fury reared up in her again; she ignored it to look at Serena. "Right. Gotcha," she said. "Call me, okay?"

Moon nodded, already turning around and jumping away.

Lita followed suit. And promptly received a heart attack when she got home and couldn't find Rini anywhere in the apartment.

"Rini?" she called. "_Rini_!"

Just as she'd run to the telephone to call Serena and summon a search party, she heard a sound in the bathroom like water running. She ran to it and found the brown-haired child.

"Was that you yelling, Lita - ?"

"Where were you?" Lita demanded, nearly shouting.

She received a blue-eyed blink in reply. For a split second, the world spun. "I was in here."

"The hel - " Lita restrained her sailor's tongue, pressing her fingers to her suddenly throbbing temple. "No, you weren't," she said slowly, through her teeth. "I checked the bathroom."

Again, an owlish blink. "You must be mistaken.

"I'm not – " Lita inhaled. "Okay. Bedtime. Time for you to get your pajamas."

"I'm very sorry to have frightened you, Lita," said Rini contritely and trotted off to the spare bedroom.

Lita sighed and leaned against the wall. She _had_ checked the bathroom…hadn't she? At the very least, she would have noticed a light under the door, wouldn't she?

"Hmm." She'd leave it for now. Either way, almost saying 'hell' in front of a kindergartner was inexcusable. A little shamefacedly, she hoped Serena wouldn't find out…and she thought of the distracted look on Serena's face and sighed. She thought of the shellshocked one on Motoki's and hissed.

L

Serena detransformed in the first empty alley she found and then ran back to the hospital so fast that both her sides felt as though they had been torn apart and then stitched back together with thread. The youma had gotten a lucky hit on her when she tripped over her sword – Miss Lanai would have killed her if she'd seen such a clumsy move, but she was dead on her feet after worrying about Darien all night – and the bruise throbbed on her face. She'd detransformed too quickly for it to heal...

She returned the nurses' smiles as she stepped out of the elevator and hoped that they didn't notice how had she was breathing. Darien's room was the last one down the right hall; she peeked in carefully, hopefully, but he still hadn't woken up. He still looked so pale…his breaths were so shallow… She sat back down in the chair that she had left next to his bed and settled down to watch him drowsily…

L

Blackness clung to his eyes like a sheet glued by sweat. Dimly, he felt the weight of anesthesia in his veins… soft beeps and muffled voices tumbled past his ears like water rolling down rocks… Adrenaline surged like a scream in his bloodstream as he recognized the sounds of a hospital.

Beneath the crackly sheets his fingers dug into the mattress, panic numbing his muscles. Then a cool touch pressed against his forehead and slid him back into unconsciousness…

_"Okay, Darien, we've got to make a plan."_

_"Plan for what?" He heard the mattress squeak and rustle as Serena climbed onto the foot of the hospital bed._

_"For getting the nurses to wait until AFTER 2:30 to discharge us," replied Serena's voice, as though the answer was obvious. "We've GOT to find out who Carmen chooses!"_

_"I highly doubt if your life will be seriously impacted if you don't find out whether Carmen chooses the reformed drug dealer or the unfaithful billionaire." He heard footsteps. "Someone's coming."_

_"Lita!" The papery sheets protested loudly as Serena launched herself from the bed. "Do you get the soaps network?"_

_"No way." Lita's voice sounded offended. "Who watches that crap?"_

_There was a silence._

_"Oops," said Lita's voice. "Sorry, Shields. I didn't know."_

_"What?" He glared. "Not _me_. Why would I want to watch a soap opera? I'm _blind._"_

_Lita whistled. He knew it was Lita because Serena couldn't whistle. "Someone's grumpy this morning. _

_"ANYWAY," interrupted Serena. "Let's get back to the important matter – I NEED to see today's episode."_

_"The arcade gets cable channels," he heard himself saying. "And knowing Motoki, the soaps network is definitely one of the channels they have."_

_"YES!" Serena bounced back onto the bed, hugging his arm happily. "You're a genius, Darien! Finally we'll be able to eat REAL food – I think I'll have a triple chocolate milkshake first, and then some fries – "_

_"And then they'll check you back into the hospital tomorrow for a gastric bypass," he said, and caught her ponytail as he felt her whip it at him. He tugged on it, and she went toppling, and he caught her just before she could tumble off the side of the bed, laughing…  
_

He jerked awake with a shuddering gasp, like a drowning man finally breaking the surface of the ocean. He remembered the dream except it was really a memory and he remembered the exact day it had taken place – exactly one week after Prom and the fight with Beryl – and for a moment he relaxed in the belief that he had fallen asleep on his last day in the hospital before going home for the summer.

Then, like a tidal wave, the memory of Serena's lips against his crashed into him, and he was submerged in an airless prison of horror. What had he _done_?

Footsteps, the quiet squeak of orthopedic shoes, reached his ears. The door hinges made a barely audible squeak. Darien clenched his eyes shut. Only then did he become suddenly aware of the weight on his leg –

"Oh, now, don't try that trick on me, Mr. Shields."

Darien's eyes opened again; his frown deepened as he both struggled to recognize the voice and to identify the weight upon his leg without feeling it…for he had a sinking feeling…

"Hmm, do you remember me?" The footsteps moved closer to the bed.

"Hisashi-san." He was quite certain of the weight now; it was a head; soft puffs of air released rhythmically to push the papery sheet against his knee in a gust of warmth. And there were only two people on the whole planet who would fall asleep with their head on his leg, and Motoki's hair wasn't long enough to account for the extra, lighter spread of weight that Darien felt sliding across the sheet as he moved his foot experimentally…

There was a tug on his wrist, and, snapping momentarily away from the thought of Serena, Darien realized that there was an IV in his left hand. "I'm honored that you remember me," said Nurse Hisashi's voice dryly.

Darien listened to the sound of her pen against her clipboard, trying to ignore the sensation of Serena's warm breath on his skin. "How are you, Hisashi-san?"

"That's what _I_ should be asking you." A tug on his other arm; how many machines was he hooked up to? "Did you miss my witty banter so much that you felt obliged to visit us again so soon? And with Miss Serena in tow, no less!"

"Of course," said Darien distractedly. He moved his hand away from the wisp of Serena's silken hair that had somehow come to curl around his little finger. "I was…" he felt the IV shift beneath his skin and recalled his anatomy textbooks. "Dehydrated?"

"Severely," was Nurse Hisashi's response. "Serena-chan told the EMTs that when she visited you at your apartment, she found you unconscious. She also said that there were nothing but diuretics in your fridge and that you hadn't slept much in the past few days." Disapproval clung to her voice.

"Yes," said Darien, barely registering her words. "How long has she been here?"

"Serena-chan?" The nurse made a final, loud pen mark on her clipboard. "A day and a half. The same as you. She should have left when visiting hours ended, but all the nurses on this floor seem to have a soft spot when it comes to her…" Her severe tone belied the fact that she, herself, was one of those nurses. She cleared her throat. "I'll send the doctor in – you should be ready to be discharged within the next few hours – but only on the condition that Serena takes you to the grocery store immediately." He heard her shoes moving toward the door. "Honestly, Mr. Shields, I took you for a much smarter young man."

The door clicked loudly shut behind her. Darien felt the rising horror again; he tried to swallow it down, tried not to feel the warm weight of Serena's head and arms upon his leg, tried not to feel the acid guilt chewing a hole through his insides, tried not to remember kissing her – _her hands gripped his sleeves like ladybugs clinging to his finger when he picked them up_ – he clenched the material of the sheet and tried again – _meeting her lips was like biting a naked electrical wire, current crackled down every bone in his body _–

The door's quiet squeak froze his thoughts like Mercury's Shabon Spray. They clattered to the floor like ice cubes. He stiffened as the cooler air of the hallway wafted in to lift goosebumps all along his skin except where Serena's hair covered him like a blanket.

"Well. Good afternoon, Mr. Shields."

Darien was silent, struggling both to thaw from the blizzard of thoughts that had assaulted him and to identify this second suspiciously familiar voice.

"You may not remember me, Darien. I'm Dr. Tomoe, I did your last check-up while Dr. Takeuchi was on maternity leave."

"Yes." Darien remembered, though the memory brought him more discomfort than reassurance. The doctor with the cold hands and burning curiosity. "I remember you."

Darien stiffened further as he heard Tomoe's shoes click closer, on the same side of the hospital bed as Serena.

"Yes, Serena here remembered me as well," the doctor's voice said. "So. You were extremely dehydrated, Mr. Shields. What happened?"

"I don't remember." Darien spoke flatly.

"Serena told us that you must just have had too many diuretics. You're very fond on Mountain Dew, I understand." Tomoe's voice was conversational. When Darien didn't say anything, the doctor continued. "Serena fell asleep looking after you. Don't the two of you have school today?"

"What adolescent wouldn't jump at the opportunity to miss school for a good reason?" said Darien shortly. "When will I be discharged?"

"Oh, within the hour, I should think," said Tomoe's voice. At last he moved, and Darien heard him printing neatly on his clipboard, the pen strokes quick but smooth. "Why so eager? _You_ don't jump at a chance to miss school?"

"No," said Darien. "When will the IV come out?"

"As soon as you tell me what dehydrated you so extensively."

"Exercise," said Darien. "Too much soda and coffee." Finality rang in his tone. He heard Tomoe sigh.

"If you insist on being so stubborn, Darien, feel free. But let me remind you that you are not an adult yet."

Darien's lips compressed. Actually, his seventeenth birthday had come and gone in August, after Serena had stopped talking to him. Involuntarily, he flinched.

No sooner had he flinched than he felt, against his skin, Serena's breathing change. He went still as death, but she had already lifted her head sleepily.

"Good morning, Serena-san," said the doctor.

Darien felt small cold fingers grip his ankle. Because she heard Tomoe? Was she afraid of him? Darien's hackles rose.

"D-Dr. Tomoe," said her voice. "How are you? Is Darien – "

Darien heard her cut off and felt the weight of her stare upon him.

"Awake, as you can see," said Tomoe's voice. "As are you, now." His footsteps moved to the other side of the bed. "That's a nasty bruise on your cheek, Serena. Will we have to check you in, too?"  
_Bruise?_ echoed Darien's mind.

"I fell." Serena's strained, sheepish laugh grated on him. "When I was running home before."

"Well, Nurse Hisashi will be in with the discharge papers soon," said Tomoe. Darien felt a sudden jab of pain in his wrist. "There you go, Darien, the IV is out. And now I must be off. But I trust I'll see the two of you again soon."

With that cryptic farewell, he left the room. Darien heard the door shut behind him. However much he disliked and was creeped out by Tomoe, Darien had to resist the urge to call him back. He did not feel worthy of breathing the same air as Serena at this moment, much less being alone with her…

It was clear from her silence that she felt equally uncomfortable. Otherwise she would have been chattering her teeth off – or perhaps not. She chattered when she felt uncomfortable, too. What was this, then, that she wasn't talking at all?

He didn't know. He just didn't know. In fact, he couldn't even picture the expression that was on her face right now. Always before, even when he had been blind for months, even when she hadn't talked to him for a month, he had been able to see, in his mind's eye, the exact expression Serena would be wearing, what she would be feeling, whether she was doing that chewing thing on her lower lip, or chewing on her cheek, or wrinkling her brows, and wrapping her hair around her finger or jutting out her lower lip…but now he couldn't. He couldn't read this silence, had forgotten what it meant, in the same way that he had forgotten English after spending a summer without using it, in the same way that he had forgotten his parents, in the same way that he had forgotten Fiore.

His ribs clenched.

This was how it began, wasn't it? This was what he had been afraid of from the beginning. Ever since he found out who he was – and who he was meant to be with.

At first he had felt secure in his resolution – there was no way that anyone could ever change the way he felt about Serena. There would never be any girl he felt more strongly toward than Serena, never any girl he would know better, any girl he would _want _to know better than he knew her. Despite being a reincarnation with a soulmate, he had been convinced loving someone who wasn't Serena would never happen. Soulmate or not, prophecy or not, the moon princess would never be able to displace Serena in his emotions.

But Serena wouldn't talk to him. The prophecy kept Serena from talking to him – the moon princess kept her from talking to him. And because of that, he didn't know her anymore, couldn't see her anymore – he was _forgetting _her.

When he forgot his parents, he had hated them. When he forgot Fiore, he had hated him. He had even supposedly loved the Moon Princess in his past life, but he could not remember her and he hated her more than anyone he could think of. The equation was as clear and simple as the slopes of the lines he had calculated in seventh-grade algebra: when he forgot someone, hating inevitably followed. And Serena would soon be just another point on that line. There was nothing he could do to stop it.

"Darien."

His head snapped up at her voice. "Yes?"

"I…I need to apologize – "

Of course, of _course_ she felt as though _she _was the one who had done something wrong, of course she felt as though she had betrayed her princess, why had he ever let his idiotic animalistic desires take over – why hadn't be been able to _control _them –

" – that – the – "

He finished bitterly for her without meaning to. "The kiss."

" – yes!" her voice burst out, almost like a sob. Or a shout? Was she angry – of course she was angry – "I'm very sorry – I mean – it was horrible of me – "

"Horrible of you?" tore from Darien. These words, like before, ran out of his throat without his permission. He squeezed his eyes and lips shut tight and tried to find where they were coming from so that he could shut up and just _think_, properly, for just a minute, because there had to be some way – some way that he could keep from losing her altogether –

The revelation seared through him as suddenly and blindingly as the flash of light that had burned his vision away in Beryl's caves.

But it would steal something far more precious than his sight.

Darien wet his lips. Was it only a trick of his mind that it seemed as though he could still taste the faint gloss of her strawberry chapstick?

"Serena. _I_ owe YOU an apology."

His voice was far calmer than he had expected it to be. Yet of course that made sense, for in his life had accumulated far more experience in lying than in telling the truth.

"I was the one who used you as an unaware subject in my own experiment. It was a selfish, unforgivable thing to do, and I am very sorry."

That, at least, was the truth.

He heard the crinkling of the papery sheets and tried to figure out, without her knowing, what she had done – pulled away? Clenched her fists?

Perhaps neither. Her voice, when she spoke, didn't shake, was calm as a frozen pond, and even as wailing anguish tore through him he felt relief, relief that he had never really dented her beautiful heart after all.

"Experiment?" she said.

"Yes." He adopted the voice he used to present projects at the science fair; it was a perfectly clinical cadence. "I kissed you to determine whether the feelings I harbored for you were of a romantic nature – " Only now did the flow become choppy, like water encountering a reef of rocks. He tried to hide it, but his words spilled out as sporadically and involuntarily as regurgitated chunks of food.

"I thought that perhaps…in the past few months…I had come to…" He tried to found a route around the word but could not. "… _love_ you, after a fashion… I decided to test it…to determine if I really did…_feel_ that way. For you. I tested it with the kiss. Again, I apologize."

But there was a vital piece of the puzzle still missing. He felt it, from the silence that seemed to radiate from Serena, from the uneasy sensation in his gut that nagged at him like the hot saliva that courses into your mouth to remind you that there is still more vomit to come.

After what seemed a like an eternity, he realized the missing piece. And when he squeezed it out, the lie tasted worse than any vomit that had ever crossed his tongue. "When I kissed you, I didn't feel anything. So – " He paused, a man hesitating over the precipice. He plunged. "I don't love you."

L

_"Darien?"_

_He turned toward her voice. "Yeah?"_

_"You were the guy at the Princess D Ball, right?"_

_The flush that spread up his neck felt like hives. "Mmm," he said._

_He felt quite certain that she was laughing at him. And indeed, when she spoke again, laughter tinted her voice. "Why'd you kiss me?"_

_"Because I didn't know it was you, obviously," he grumbled. To hide his discomfort, he began to lecture. "I still can't believe you fell asleep right there in the middle of a function that had already been infiltrated by youma once, not to mention all those predatory – "_

_"You were my first kiss," she announced._

_His words dried up quite suddenly. As did his throat. He swallowed. _

_"AND my second kiss," continued Serena. "I remember I felt a little sad when Tuxedo Mask kissed me at the D-Land Ball, because it wasn't my first kiss."_

_Darien's ears felt as though a red-hot poker was being pressed against them. "Sorry about that," he mumbled, remembering the Spring Fling. When he'd been so shocked at his lips meeting Serena's that he'd dropped the punch in his hand and it had splattered all over her dress…_

_"Why are you apologizing?" asked Serena in a surprised voice. "It was Numa's fault. He was the one that shoved you into me."_

_"Yeah…" That didn't make it any less mortifying. He cleared his throat. "Why are we talking about this, anyway?"_

_"Well, it just seems weird, doesn't it…" Serena's voice trailed off. "I kissed you twice as two different people but didn't realize you were the same. I feel pretty stupid."_

_"I kissed you twice too and didn't realize," he reminded her, the blush seeping from his skin._

_"I noticed that you both smelled like roses," said Serena. "But I didn't connect it. But then you both smelled like that men's cologne, and I realized it then…why didn't I notice it when you both smelled like roses, I wonder?"_

_"Well, you hated me and you loved Tuxedo Mask," said Darien, this time not blushing at all. "When you hate someone it's very hard to be analytical about anything concerning them. When you love someone the same principle applies, I imagine."_

_"You imagine?" echoed Serena, a tint of teasing in her voice, but she pushed her forehead comfortingly against his arm. _

_"Sorry, I've never loved anyone before," he said, a little defensively, but also wondering at the same time if he was lying._

_Serena was silent after that. He wondered if she was thinking, or if perhaps she'd fallen asleep._

_At last she spoke against his sleeve. "You'll find someone, Darien," she said, heating his arm with her breath. "Don't worry."_

_"Ah," he said, unnerved by the goosebumps now racing up his arm. "Um. You, too, Odango."_

_She hummed against his arm, drowsily. Then her head snapped up. He blinked, a little disconcerted by her wide eyes snapping into his. "Darien," she said seriously, her fingers tightening around his arm. "I NEVER hated you."_

_Oh, that was why? He smiled and patted her on the shoulder. "It's okay, Odango."_

_"I really _didn't._" _

_Her eyes were so wide and worried. "I believe you," he assured her, hiding his pleased grin._

_But now she averted her eyes. "It's okay if you did," she said, "but did you hate me? Back then, I mean."_

_"Serena." He bumped her with his shoulder. "One person I can assure you I never have and never will hate – " He paused, wondering at the strange shiver running through him. He finished, firmly, to banish the foreboding chill, " – is you."_

L

"Oh." Serena smiled. That was the first thing to do, always. Smile. Even when it felt like there was nothing to smile about… But it stretched her scars and the bruise on her face. And he couldn't even see her. She let the smile drop. "That's…good."

And it was good, it really was, wasn't it? Because if he already knew that he didn't really love her, there was no longer the danger of the past – of her betrayal of the princess in the Silver Millennium – repeating itself. That was good – not just good, wonderful. Even if she tried, she couldn't seduce him…

Her lungs clenched around a sob. Her skin remembered how her whole body had exploded into tingles at the touch of his lips to hers – she realized that her fingers were touching her lips, and she yanked them away, hot humiliation coursing through her like lava. That kiss that had felt to her like emerging from a cocoon, like turning into a beautiful butterfly, had been nothing but an _experiment _to him. And something that had made her nearly made her explode with an emotion had made him feel…_nothing_? She didn't know what to feel – angry that he'd done that to her, sad that he didn't return her feelings, happy that they could be friends again now that she was no longer a potential _seductress_ –

"Knock, knock."

Serena nearly leapt a mile in the air – heart thudding in her chest, she turned to look with wide eyes at Hisashi-san entering the room.

The nurse looked back at her with equally wide eyes behind her spectacles. "Serena-san, you're white as a sheet!"

"I – I just, you scared me, Hisashi-san." _Smile._ Serena curved her lips brightly at the kind nurse who had taken very good care of her over the summer, and given her a pack of ice to place over her bruise when she returned from fighting a second youma that morning. "Um – "

"Hmph," said Hisashi-san, hand on her hip. "I know I'm old, but my face shouldn't be _that_ scary. Mr. Shields, you need to get changed and sign some papers, and then you'll be free to go grocery shopping."

"I don't have any spare clothes," began Darien, but Hisashi cut him off as Serena winced.

"Serena brought some for you. Do you need help getting changed?"

"NO!"

Despite herself, Serena found a smile breaking her face at the sight of a flush coloring Darien's deathly pallid cheeks. She had been so sure he was dead…

"Then we'll step outside." Hisashi's bony old fingers seized Serena by the shoulders and pulled her out the door. "Men are so much jumpier about the hospital gowns…"

Serena smiled at the woman's quip and pulled away. "I should be going, Hisashi-san. Please tell Darien – "

"Oh, no you don't!" The bony fingers seized her again. "I told Mr. Shields that the only way he was getting out of here was if you took him grocery shopping. I don't want to see his mug in this hospital again for at least another six months!"

Unease filled Serena. "Oh, no, I'm sure he would rather – "

"Rather my foot," said Hisashi-san. "Boys like him need a woman to look after them, otherwise they get into all sorts of idiotic scrapes. Here, he should be done by now – " She re-opened the door without knocking. Serena followed her in, hands over her eyes.

"Well, then, Mr. Shields – "

Judging that Hisashi-san would only have begun talking again if the coast was clear, Serena lowered her hands. Then her face went red as she got an eyeful of Darien pulling a t-shirt over his head, and she clapped her hands back over her eyes. Immediately her mind dove into the memory of kissing him, her hands pressed flat against his chest –

"Okay, you'll need to sign right here – " Nurse Hisashi guided a pen in Darien's hand along the lines he needed to sign. "And here. Okay. You're done. Now get out of here, and I don't want to see you again this year, got it? Serena, take your hands away from your eyes and take this boy grocery shopping."

No sooner had the door clicked shut behind Nurse Hisashi than a youma presence spiked in Serena's head, as sharp as the pain that usually flared when she whipped her head around too quickly.

Her eyes snapped to Darien. "It's a youma," she said, needlessly, for she could tell from the sudden set of his lips that he had sensed it, too. "Stay here, I'm going."

She opened the door and darted down the hallways, flying down the stairs. Only when she heard the footfalls echoing her own did she realize that she had followed her.

But it was a weak youma, like the three others she had dusted earlier today, and would pose little to no threat to him, especially if she got there first, and so she did not stop him from following her. She sped up instead and focused on the presence still throbbing like a headache in her skull, as well as on finding an empty alley outside in which to transform.

They transformed simultaneously, and she felt _Darien _more clearly than she ever had before, as if the ribbons that wrapped around her to compose her fuku were really loops of the rope that linked them.

Despair and regret scoured at her like a desert sandstorm. He felt like a horrible person for what he had just told her. She would hate him, and he hoped she would. He wanted – needed – her to.

_NO!_ Determination stabbed through her like a sword. Conviction submerged her: unrequited love or not, Darien was her friend, and that would never change – memories of Rei's twisted face, Mercury's crying one, Mina's sobbing rage, peppered her like acid rain – she refused to let it. He may be the Moon Princess's soulmate, but right now, no one else shared the bond with Darien that she did – no one else could sense the inner torture to which he subjected himself – and she should never have deserted him to it. Until the Moon Princess arrived, Serena would keep him alive, just as he'd kept her alive so many times, and more than that, she would make him _happy_. No more of this self-loathing – this hatred –

She spun and seized his arm. The transformation fireworks dazzled her eyes; she couldn't see him. But she felt, clear and sharp as the barrages of knives Miss Lanai used in their training, the guilt that tore at him.

"I will NEVER hate you!" Her voice rang out fiercely, like a slap dealt to a hysterical child. She dug her fingers deep into his arm. As though she could push her promise into his skin.

She heard him suck in a breath as her vision cleared. His psyche turned still as ice.

A scream pierced the air from a distance. Sailor Moon released Tuxedo Mask and spun, vaulting to the rooftops.

Six buildings later, she leapt down into the street with her tiara-sword gripped in both hands. She landed atop the youma, her boots digging into its shoulders and her sword planted neatly in its skull. Quickly, just before it crumbled into ash, she somersaulted backward to land in a crouch on the sidewalk.

Tuxedo Mask landed beside her in a flutter of cape. Almost without thinking about it, she lifted a hand, and it found his wrist. His questions and surprise flowed into her.

"There's nothing to forgive." She answered him in a casual tone, as though he had spoken aloud. "And these black youma are very weak. I've dusted four of them today, counting this one."

She stood, watching the glitter-spangled blue energy drift back into the crumpled pedestrians and ignoring his jerk of shock. Then she jumped, windowsill by windowsill, back up to the roofs, continuing to speak as he followed her.

"They're not like the ones that came after Rini that first night. They don't speak, just suck energy. They didn't come until after it stopped raining."

Silence sat between them for a moment. Mask's mind echoed with words. _I will never hate you – never have and never will – hate – you – _

"I meant it." Moon's quiet voice shattered the echoes. He heard her take a step closer to him; then, as though she hadn't spoken at all, she said on a completely different topic, "What happened yesterday?"

His lips compressed. She must have seen it, or perhaps she sensed him recoiling: she immediately went on the offensive. "You said you had it under control."

"I did." Tuxedo Mask's voice was stiff; if anything, her words to him had made him feel worse than before, even if they had spread warmth throughout his insides. He had just effing told her that he DIDN'T love her, he couldn't exactly tell her that the reason he'd let himself lose control of the rain was because he had wallowed in self-pity over her rejecting his kiss. In a tight voice, he lied, "It's the first time I've done something like that. I didn't know it was going to affect me."

"Of course it was going to do something to you, it's your planet, isn't it – " Sailor Moon cut herself off. When she spoke again a moment later, calm had reined in her voice again, a brusque tone very unlike her. "What happened to the atmospheric disturbance?"

"It's gone," said Mask promptly, mirroring her impersonal tone. "I can't sense it anywhere. I remember noticing that something was missing when I passed out. It probably disappeared then."

Silence resumed its seat between them. At last, Moon sighed and said reluctantly, "We have to tell everyone. At lunch tomorrow, under the tree – you'll tell Motoki?"

His grimace nearly made her smile. "Yeah."

"Asanuma won't be happy to be left out – "

"Serves him right for taking an unscheduled vacation and dumping us with his fugitive cousin – "

Moon spoke over him. " – but we'll tell him later."

"Speaking of which, where is she?" Mask had only just noticed Rini's absence.

Now it was Moon's turn to stiffen. "She wanted to stay with Lita."

Mask sensed the tension in her voice and, to both of their shocks, said abruptly, "I would wonder why anyone in their right mind would willingly stay with that Amazon, but Rini's so obviously not in her right mind there's no point."

Serena's chest erupted in sudden, hopeful warmth. Throat tight, she managed, "Like you're anyone to talk about being in a right mind."

"Compared to you, even a Bedlam inmate would be in their right mind."

Suddenly, they were both smiling. Sailor Moon realized it and felt as though the canyon that had gaped in front of her for months had suddenly been spanned by a bridge. Her eyes were hot and wet – for the first time in a long time, with happiness, not despair.

She thrust a gloved hand out, determined to seize their friendship again before it fell and was torn away by the current. "Friends again?"

For a moment, as he hesitated. She saw the bridge shake violently in her mind's eye, as though about to be torn away by a violent wind.

Then the fabric of his own gloves whispered against hers as he carefully clasped her hand. "Friends."

L

A/N: (Nervous laugh.) Um… sorry?


	15. Chapter 15

A/N: Okay, recently while I was poring through all my STC planning to create a proper timeline, I came across several bits of writing that I thought you guys might be a little amused by. Remember a few chapters ago when I was telling you guys that I felt like the characters were getting out of character? When that happens, I try to have conversations with the characters to figure out why they're doing what they're doing and how we can fix it. I have these conversations A LOT. So, below, for your reading pleasure, I have included one of these author-character conversations from this season. Skip it if you want; the actual chapter is below it.

The author, Serena, Darien, Lita, Motoki, and Asanuma sit around a table. It's time for the frequent group therapy meetings that they have multiple times a chapter to figure out who the heck is doing what and why. The topic of today's meeting is "Falling Out of Character: Why It's Happening and What We Can Do to Fix It."

"I feel as though you aren't quite yourselves," the author said to her two protagonists.

Asanuma snorted. "Of course they're not their selves. What did you expect them to do, dance a jig because you stuffed a moon princess between them?"

"You, too," said the author. "You're just not as funny as you used to be."

Everyone else snorted except Asanuma, who was slack-jawed, and Motoki, who patted him comfortingly on the shoulder.

"You, Motoki. And Lita!" The author jabbed a pencil accusingly at them. "You're not doing enough! You're just lumps! I might as well cut you out of the story altogether!"

"Oh, yeah?" growled Lita, eyes flashing.

"See!" The author slammed a hand down on the table. "That's what I'm talking about! Everyone look at Lita! She never gets out of character!"

"Of course not, she's one-dimensional," said Darien.

"Hey!" said everyone except Serena, who said, "Darien!" and Asanuma, who smirked a little. Which actually means that only Motoki and the author said it. Oh, and Lita.

"That was a LITTLE better," said the author then, tapping her pencil against her lips. "But not enough. I know what you act like with Lita, that never changes. It's SERENA you're not doing so well with."

"Neither am I," said Lita, glaring at said blonde, who had ducked her head.

"Let her be," said Darien, returning the glower.

"Ah, I see." The author scribbled. "He's still very protective and doesn't hide it…"

"This is why she's so depressed!" Lita jabbed a finger at Darien. "You're engaged to a princess but you keep sending her all these mixed signals! Stop being a jerk and just move away already!"

Serena's head snapped up – her mouth was frozen in the 'O' that meant she had been about to say something but she had stopped herself just in time. She snapped it shut.

"You're mean," Asanuma told Lita. "You should be a bus driver when you grow up."

"Shut up, you," growled Lita. "You know I'm right! Don't you?" She was demanding this of Darien, who was glowering but not speaking.

"Hmmm," said the author. "Not much is getting done like this. Lita's character overpowers everything. Not that there's anything wrong with that! Maybe it's time for a more private atmosphere…"

Lita, Motoki, and Asanuma disappeared. A beach, moonlit and deserted, crashed down behind Serena and Darien.

"Okay!" chirped the author, grabbing an iced Mountain Dew. "Perfect romantic opportunity! Pretend I'm not even here!"

"Isn't this the beach you used for that angsty Malachite Mina scene in the first season?" Serena asked, looking around.

"I'm saving the earth! Recycling!" insisted the author.

"You can't recycle romance," muttered Darien.

Serena and the author both gasped, spinning around. "Darien said ROMANCE?" they blurted in unison. Then turned toward each other and nodded vigorously. "HE DID!"

"Oh, for God's sake – "

"IDEA!" The author snapped her fingers. "Well, no it's actually probably your idea, Serena-chan – "

"I should just decide that the best way to not fall for Darien is to go back to normal?" Serena finished, eyes bright. "Yes! It's perfect! Just the bold, cheerful, naïve sort of thing I'd do, plus it means I can go back to being with hi – " She stopped suddenly, blushing, and darted a glance at him.

"By all means, continue," Darien drawled. He took a step closer to her, his eyes on hers.

"No time!" The author burst in, spraying them with a slosh of seawater. "How will you react to this Darien? Serena, what gives you the idea? How does everyone else take it – and Miss Lanai!"

"What?" said Darien sharply.

Serena darted an alarmed glance at the author.

"Ohohohoho," chuckled the author nervously. "Oops, did I mention that?"

END.

As you can see, not much usually gets accomplished in these sessions. Half the time I come up with an idea I think is brilliant (see Serena's plan above) and then scrap it as idiotic or unworkable (usually after I've already written about 10 pages using it).

Anyway, time for the real story.

JadeEye: No wonder there is so much angst. I'm sorry it took so long for an update but real life is a b!#.

Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Fifteen: Resurfacing

L

On Tuesday, Lita left Rini at home while she went to school. "Are you sure?" she asked the girl, watching her carefully.

"I won't break anything if that's what you mean," said Rini, giving her a look.

"I was thinking more along the lines of leaving and getting caught by a youma without us knowing about it."

"I won't do that, either."

"Okay…" Lita bit her lip, then bent over and dug in the kitchen drawer. "Here we go," she muttered, pulling her cell phone out of the jumble of coins in her junk drawer. She placed it on the counter. Then she picked up the house phone and called her cell number before handing the house phone to Rini. "Here," she said, leaning over to silence the vibrating phone. "I just dialed my cell, so now it's on redial. The number's on the fridge, too." She pointed. "I want you to carry the phone with you EVERYWHERE, got it? Even the bathroom. That way if anything happens, if a youma shows up, you can call and I'll be right here."

"You can't sense youma?" said Rini, looking up with slight interest sharpening her features.

Lita frowned, rubbing her temple as it throbbed. "No. Can Asanuma?"

Rini shrugged.

Lita turned on the TV for Rini, showed her the bookshelf, where paper was if she wanted to draw…she would have to pick up some coloring books on the way home, she decided.

L

"Well, if it isn't our two absentees," said Miss Haruna as she began role call, lifting a brow. "Did you two enjoy your extended weekend?"

The two girls' eyes met in confusion. "You weren't here yesterday?" whispered Lita to her blonde friend.

Serena looked equally surprised. "Uh-uh. You neither?" Then, as Miss Haruna continued to role call, she whispered, "Make sure you come to the tree at lunch. We'll tell you then."

'_We' now, is it?_ thought Lita. She sat back in her chair, trying to ignore her headache, and watched Serena carefully for the rest of the lesson.

L

Serena dressed quickly after PE and stood for a moment in the stall, deliberating. It had struck her for the first time during PE that Miss Lanai may have brought back with her another Senshi, and then how could she keep everything about her past with the princess secret from Lita – or even Darien? They were talking again now… She remembered a whole, surreal month of her life, after Luna had kicked her out and before Lita had arrived and become Sailor Jupiter, when he had been the sole confidante to every single one of her secrets. He had managed to make her feel better about every one of them – even going to hell –

_No_She would not tell him about what she had been in the past. Not now. Not when their tenuous relationship had just been revived, and not when he still already felt guilty about how he had felt about her. Knowing what she had done with him in the past would only amplify that guilt.

She gave herself that noble reason to justify her decision. But she knew that the real reason not to tell was because she did not want him to know what she'd done. What a horrible person she had been – was.

Her fists clenched in her skirt. She hurried from the locker room to the art classroom, where she reached for the doorknob, then caught herself and knocked.

A moment passed. Then the door opened, and Serena found herself staring at the wavy-haired substitute.

"Oh – " she said, stepping back.

"Serena." The substitute's mellifluous voice did not as much cut her off as melt into her voice. "Hello. Aren't you a little early for class?" And she smiled, looking her up and down.

Serena flushed a little, not quite knowing why. "Sorry, I thought Miss Lanai might be back."

"No, not yet." The substitute smiled again, opening the door wider. A pen clattered from its perch above her ear to the floor. She let out an "oops!" and bent to pick it up.

Serena scrambled down also to pick it up, for it had fallen at her foot, but a wind whipped up suddenly, and grabbed hastily at her skirt to keep it from flying up.

"I've got it, thank you." The teacher straightened and held up her pen to a faintly blushing Serena. The substitute's wavy blonde hair had been pushed into her face by the gust of wind; she pushed it behind her ears. "What a chilly wind! Winter's coming, hmm?"

"Yes," said Serena. "Um – I'll see you in class, I guess…" She backed away, dropping a quick bow, and scurried out of the hallway. A gust of air on her leg above her knee caught her attention, and she looked down. "Oh!" A six-centimeter rip ran from the hem of her skirt up. Beneath it she could spot the tiny, almost invisible scar from the anonymous attack at the beginning of the weekend. She must have trodden on her hem when she bent to pick up the pen and ripped the pleat when she stood back up so hastily.

Torn clothing was no stranger to Serena, with all her scrapes and klutz attacks. But she still sighed, thinking of the chew-out she was sure to receive from her mother when she got home. If there had been time, she could have dropped by the Home Ec room and asked Kim-chan to help her sew it up, but she was meeting everyone at lunch today, and she was already late as it was… She yelped when she saw the time on the clock and took off for the main courtyard.

L

Motoki swallowed when he stepped out of the hallway and saw only Lita sitting under the oak tree in the courtyard. Damn that Darien for being called to the guidance counselor's office and leaving him alone to meet with Lita… where was Serena, anyway? Maybe if she hadn't shown up, the 'meeting' that had been so ominously scheduled was canceled, and he didn't have to go –

_Motoki! Are you a man, man?_ His inner Jiminy Cricket, which always seemed to speak in Asanuma's voice, berated him. _Shove your lameness where the sun doesn't shine and go talk to her!_

Suddenly, he was standing in front of her, the nearly dead winter grass crunching beneath his shoes. "We need to talk."

Lita didn't look up at him. She transferred her gaze to a tree root sticking up out of the ground and pressed her hands together tightly.

Motoki grimaced. "Lita, look at me?" _Loser, it wasn't supposed to come out like a question!_

He tried again, more assertively. "Lita, look at me."

She spoke. Her voice was tight as a noose. "Let's not talk right now."

"You haven't wanted to talk all week."

Motoki's voice was gentle, but it made Lita think of a weak, whining puppy begging for a kick. She ground her knuckles into her neck. "Stop."

"Fine." Now he sounded angry. The switch should have made her want to knock his teeth out less, but it didn't. "I talked to Asanuma for you."

He paused, obviously expecting a response. Lita pressed her hands deeper into her neck and stared at the grass. The headache that had pounded in her head all day had grown to an impossible volume…

"He said some senator wanted to talk to his dad personally, so they're staying longer – Lita!"

"What?" she snapped, finally yanking her eyes up to glare at him.

But he wasn't even staring at her eyes anymore. He was looking above her, at something. What, he kept insisting on her attention and then he ignored her when she finally gave it to him?

More fury crackled inside her, and she felt sparks of electricity fizzing at her finger. Eyes bulging, she clenched her fist and stuffed it into her jacket.

Motoki stared; he had half-risen to his feet, and there was a sick feeling of realization joining the uncontrollable rage burning inside her.

"Lita." His eyes snapped back to hers.

The sparks in her finger suddenly exploded into a ball of energy. Her pullover began to smoke and a clump of grass barely an inch away from Motoki's shoe burst into flames.

Lita stared at it, and so did Motoki, the same horror mirrored in both of their faces. Then Lita leaned forward, as though hypnotized, and pressed her palm into the small fire, her skin screamed in pained protest and the orange flame was buried. Lita looked up to avoid the sight of her burned skin and met Motoki's eyes instead.

"Lita, your hair is _green_," he whispered.

She lunged forward.

A green haze had swirled across her vision; she could not see him but felt only the insatiable urge to kill him, and she felt a scrap of fabric within her reach –

A hand slammed into her sternum. She flew backward, far further than any _Terran_ should have been able to throw HER, snarled the existence inside her before the fog was gusted away as though by a gale of wind and she was staring at a black-haired man –

"Did you just try to attack Motoki?"

Barely veiled rage bubbled beneath his words; Lita blinked, staring at him. What - ?

Then she felt cold fingers gripping her arm, and she looked down. Serena's blonde hair fell over Lita's shoulder.

"Lita," came her trembling whisper, hidden by the tresses. "This is what you meant? This is why you had to dye your – "

"Serena, get away from her!"

"Darien – "

That was Motoki's voice; Lita felt, like a flash of movement in the corner of her eye, the green rage stirring –

"Lita." Now Serena's wide eyes, her wide, kind, scared blue eyes stared into Lita's. "Lita, do you hate me?"

The rage receded. Lita stared at Serena and suddenly became aware of her own ragged breathing.

"No," she panted, for suddenly the need to reassure Serena had eclipsed all else. "Serena, I'd never hate you – are you crazy – "

"Motoki! Get back!" Darien's snarl snapped both girls' attention away. Lita's eyes swept first to Motoki, who had crept closer to them – she would not look at his face – and then Shields, who was striding forward, his hand up, brandishing, threatening – as though he held a sword –

Lita twisted again. A strangled noise escaped her throat. Green flashed behind her eyes, obscuring her sight, fireworks, strobe lights, flashing metal –

"What's wrong with her? Lita – "

"Get back, I said!"

"We have to take her to the hospital!"

"Quiet!"

"I'm taking her home – "

"You'll do no such thing – SERENA!"

"Darien Shields, let go of me – "

_En_dym_ion – _

Something touched her and the light exploded, turning red and splattering, her eyes exploded open, and she saw a blue-suited Senshi beneath her, and it was as though the world had been inverted to a negative image of itself, and something fell away, fell back into place, she didn't know –

L

" – cold water, Rini."

"Her hair – "

"Cold water, she said!" snapped his voice – Shields'.

Lita groaned and forced her eyes to open.

"What the hell?" she groaned, and squinted up into the faces that were way too far into her personal face.

"LITA!" Serena promptly choked the life out of her. "You're OKAY!"

"Yeah, I'm fine…" Lita sat up, patting Serena on the back and realized that she was in her bed and not only Shields but _Motoki_ were in her bedroom. "**OUT**!" she thundered.

They fled – well, Motoki fled, Shields rolled his eyes and strode out.

"Lita." Fingers tight around her wrist, serious eyes on hers, Serena looked at her. "What happened?"

"You tell me." Lita looked around. "Why did I go from arguing with Motoki – " Her stomach clenched angrily again. "- to being in my bedroom?" she finished with gritted teeth.

Serena noticed. "This is about Toki," she said. "Somehow. Talk to me, Lita."

"Serena, it's nothing – " Her friend didn't need anything more to worry about in her life, especially judging by the garbage-bag sized bags beneath her eyes.

"Lita, look in your mirror," Serena commanded.

Lita obeyed before she knew it, and a gasp flew from her mouth as she spotted her hair. "Again! When?"

"That's not nothing," said Serena angrily. "What's been happening to you, Lita?"

"Ahem." Rini barged back into the room. She looked at Serena, not Lita. "_He_ says that he'll kill all of Lita's plants if you two don't come out and explain to them now."

Serena's eyes flared. "You can tell Darien – "

"I'm not telling him anything," retorted Rini. "He's _your_ boyfriend."

Serena took a step closer to Rini. Lita's eyes narrowed; it was strange to see Serena taller than someone. "I've told you," she said quietly, "that he's not my boyfriend, Rini. I won't tell you again."

She strode past Rini to the door. Lita got up and followed, peeking a glance at Rini's unreadable face.

"And YOU!" Serena stood in front of Darien now, her ponytails quivering. Lita's eyes widened all over again. Serena was talking to Darien? "What gives you the right to order someone around in her own house?"

Lita noticed that Serena seemed to be ignoring the obvious fact that Darien was the prince of the planet, and her shock gave way to approval.

"If she can't control herself from attacking her own friends, then she's a threat." Darien spoke to her, but his face was turned toward Lita. "Or have you forgotten Mars and Mercury?"

Lita's stomach flipped. Her memory spun with the crackling rage, the green fog, the burning grass…

"That – " began Serena furiously.

Lita interrupted. "Serena, he's right." Realization settled along her like a cold heavy blanket of snow, numbing the irritation she felt toward Shields. "I am a threat. I've been having weird mood swings…NOT those kind," she directed viciously at the males. "And I haven't been able to control my electricity. Plus, there's THIS." She yanked at a hank of her dead-grass-colored hair. "Something wrong's going on with me. Until we figure out what it is…" She trailed off lamely, then said, "Serena, I couldn't bear it if I did something to you like Venus did."

Silence filled the room. Lita stared stubbornly at the wall behind their heads.

Serena was the first to speak. "That's crazy. You're Lita, you'd never hurt any of us."

"Wouldn't I?" said Lita. She didn't look at any of them. "That bolt was aimed for Toki."

"But it wasn't _you_." Motoki had only the smallest note of uncertainty in his voice, but it was enough that his words granted Lita not one iota of comfort.

"I don't know who it was," she said.

"Who it was is irrelevant," Darien said. "It was still your body and your powers. It's not safe for Serena to be near you."

Lita, to the surprise of everyone there, inclined her head in agreement, though she twisted her neck again, as though to banish an itch at her collarbone.

"That's STUPID!" Serena burst out. "If anything, it's not safe for you guys to be near ME – "

Darien ignored her. "It's not safe for Rini to stay with you anymore, either."

"Don't ignore me!" half-shouted Serena, but Rini stepped over to her and grabbed a fistful of her torn school skirt. "Then I'm staying with HER."

Lita lifted her head and saw the flicker of…something… flash across Serena's face as her mouth fell shut. She tried to ignore the rejection that hissed through her and went to the guest room. She returned to the living room with Rini's bag and handed it to her.

Lita turned back to the rest of them then, drawing herself up to her full and considerable height. "I want to be alone now," she said with as much dignity as she could muster.

Darien stepped forward. "We need to talk – "

It was Motoki who seized Darien's arm. "Lay off." Lita wouldn't look at either of them. "She said she wants to be alone. We'll talk tomorrow." Lita felt him glance over at her, then at Serena. "Okay?"

"Okay," said Lita stonily. She walked them all to the door, and they filed silently out. When she closed the door, she sighed and leaned against the wood. Motoki's face swam to the surface of her mind, and electricity stabbed up her spine. She gasped, nearly biting through her bottom lip, and staggered to the couch. Her limbs spasmed as electrical jolted up and down her body for the rest of the night.

L

"What's up with you and Serena?"

Darien scented the nervous perspiration from Motoki as they walked down the chilly afternoon streets. When had the weather become cool? He realized that he still wore his short-sleeved uniform; he had not realized that the weather had changed, only yesterday had been the oppressive heat of summer, it seemed… How long had he spent closeted up sulking in Elysion? Resentful because Serena would not speak to him, because he was bound to a princess he didn't love, because the presence of a past prince inside him cut him off from all the things he loved and pushed him toward things he did not…angry at Serena because she wouldn't betray her princess for him, trying to break that loyalty…

And now he found that Lita all along had been dealing with the same problems, with a past self trying to control her, and doing what Endymion in him had not – trying to kill the people he loved. And she, too, was bound to the princess, more tightly even than he was – he remembered what Zoicite had told Serena about the Senshi's bond to the princess, remembered Serena's shadowed face and shaking whisper – _I thought that maybe if I stop being a Senshi, I won't go to hell_. And Lita, Lita too loved Serena, as he claimed to do, but Lita had unhesitatingly decided to remove herself from Serena's presence when her past incarnation threatened her. While he, Darien, had clung and complained and railed against leaving Serena alone, had even gone so far as to make her betray her princess-liege by kissing him, had done the exact opposite of protect her…

"Darien. Darien?"

Darien looked at Motoki and tried to clear away the misery that he felt clouding his eyes. Yet here was another reminder of his selfishness, his petulant immaturity, staring him in the face, someone else that he had treated in a way that they did not deserve – he had neglected Motoki for so long.

The thought drifted through his mind, like a piece of seaweed through the ocean, that perhaps the defection of Endymion's Shittenou to Beryl had not been involuntary. If Endymion had been anything like Darien, he had deserved to have his friends betray him.

"What is it, Motoki?" Darien said, a weariness in his voice that unnerved even him.

"I just wondered – " Motoki hesitated, Darien felt and heard the faltering of his steps on the pavement. "You and Serena are talking again?"

Now it was Darien's turn to hesitate. The irony struck him: just as he and Serena had begun to talk to each other again, Motoki and Lita had begun to avoid each other. It was almost enough to extinguish the relief that still burned in him from being able to talk to Serena again, even if he would never again hold her close enough to feel her soft hair or the butterfly brush of her eyelashes… He cleared his throat. "Yes."

Silence fell once more. Then Motoki said, "Should I ask?"

"There's nothing to tell," said Darien. He did not feel about a dredging psychological conversation about himself at the moment; moreover, he did not deserve one. He suddenly felt very acutely the weight of all that Motoki had done for him in the past and, in start contrast, the lack of his deeds in return. He knew that just as Asanuma usually spilled his frustrations into Motoki, Asanuma was, on the rare occasion of Motoki's venting, Motoki's vessel, but Asanuma wasn't here. He asked, "What about you? Do you want to talk about Lita?"

"I don't know what happened." The bitterness in Motoki's voice vaguely surprised Darien and even lifted a few hairs on the back of his neck, like a warning sign of danger. Motoki rarely sounded bitter, and he had not expressed any resentment in Lita's apartment, only concern – even protectiveness.

He remained silent, though, and for a minute, so did Motoki. Then he exploded, "I haven't done anything! It's like just one day she started looking at me like I was… a youma, or something, and she wouldn't talk to me, and I backed off! I figured, Serena was all holed up with Miss Lanai all the time, and we were eating together alone every day and working together, and she was sick of me, or she was still mad at me for not telling her about – _you know_ – so I backed off, I cooled it down, I gave her space, but then she – she – _that_…"

Motoki fell quiet. Then he said, abruptly, "Why did Serena ask her that?"

"Ask her what?"

"At school, when you guys came... Serena said to her, 'Lita, do you hate me?' Why did she say that?"

Motoki and Asanuma knew the bare bones of how Ami and Rei had been Senshi who kicked Serena out of the fold when she got too close to Tuxedo Mask. The flesh of the story – how the Senshi had believed that Serena had been a traitor to the princess and themselves, the vicious, murderous intent of Mars and Venus toward her – Darien and Serena had left out when telling them, Darien to protect Serena's feelings and Serena because she did not want to hurt Asanuma's feelings with an unfavorable portrayal of Rei.

Now, Darien told Motoki, haltingly, the rest of that story. The sun sank lower and lower into the horizon as he related Luna's and Rei's violent overtures toward Serena, the reason for his crabby, sleep-deprived behavior in the weeks leading up to the Spring Fling, Lita's arrival and subsequent discovery as a Senshi by Luna, Serena's near-death experiences at the hands of Sailor Venus… the way that Serena had always glanced at Lita when they came into contact with the other Senshi, timidly, almost frightened, as though she could not believe that Lita did not believe that she was a traitor, even now, like today, as if she was waiting for Lita to do the same thing as Luna, Mars, Mercury, and Venus.

"I never realized…" said Motoki slowly. "I mean, it doesn't seem possible…that Serena was such an outsider. That she could ever be so…alone."

Darien said nothing. The only reason that Serena had ever been ostrascized was him. First when she helped him as Tuxedo Mask and then when he made her feel as though she really had betrayed her princess. He remembered Sailor Venus's words, that as long as Serena was an ally of Endymion, who had caused their princess's death, she would be her enemy…

"Motoki," he said abruptly. "I need to apologize." Oh, how poisonous these familiar words were. "Lita doesn't hate you."

Motoki snorted, his bitterness like Darien's. "I appreciate it, Darien, but I'm not stupid. A girl doesn't aim a lightning bolt at a guy she likes."

"No," said Darien. "It's because you're one of the Shittenou. Sailor Venus wanted to kill Serena after she found out that I was Endymion. The Senshi have this…homicidal urge toward Endymion – " He could not bring himself to say '_me_.' " – because of what he did to their kingdom and their princess. That emotion spilled over to Serena because she was allied with me. Now, when Lita's previous incarnation, Sailor Jupiter, is taking over, she's getting that same murderous urge, and she probably senses that you're one of the Shittenou, someone allied with the prince who ruined their kingdom, and that's why she tried to kill you. Not because she hates you."

They stood in front of the arcade now and had stood there for some time. Dusk had fallen; above them, insects buzzed around the lit streetlamp. Motoki was undoubtedly late for his evening shift, but he showed no sign of wanting to go inside.

"But…" Motoki crouched against the lamppost and looked up at Darien. "Why is it happening now? Why is Sailor Jupiter taking her over now?"

Darien thought of the dark leviathan inside him, of the rage that he had felt bubbling up inside him like a separate entity ever since Serena had stopped talking to him, of the puppeteer that seemed to move his limbs when he sparred with Helios or used the Golden Crystal. But Serena had not said anything about her own incarnation stirring, and Rei and Ami were no longer here to see if the same thing was happening to them.

He dug a hand into his hair and felt the familiar desperation twisting his guts. "I don't know."

L

Sailor Pluto knew. As did the Senshi standing a step behind her.

The latter examined her senior's face. "You are going to submerge me again," she predicted, a disdainful expression marring her elfin face.

"No." Sailor Pluto paced in front of the several mirrors of time that played out before them. "It would make no difference; your consciousness had already reawakened. If not for that _damn _– " She spun, slamming her staff into the fog-carpeted floor.

"She is tenacious," said the other Senshi. "She ignored our warning although it clearly indicated attacks beyond the level of strength I possessed when I took my leave."

"Tenacious or a fool?" said Pluto grimly.

Her companion inclined her head with a small smirk. "The two often go hand in hand, Pluto."

Pluto grunted.

Her companion continued, "However, perhaps I took too much for granted when I assumed that she possessed a cephalized nervous system." She paused, then grinned and added helpfully, "That's Terran scientific jargon for a brain."

"The High Senshi do not require brains, only blind loyalty," said Pluto darkly, ignoring the joke. "They expect too much. How do they expect to protect her when Chaos comes barreling into the system – "

"I echo your passionate fury, Pluto, but unless you wish the princess's identity revealed, Mars' and Jupiter's awakening must be frozen." The other Senshi's smirk grew. "No pun intended, of course."

"If Venus could be sent back – " Pluto gazed into one of the mirrors, which showed a dark-haired woman entering a doctor's office.

"You would have to kill her." The Senshi's voice had been playful before. Now grimness and reluctance had entered her words. "And she would only return again. Senshi return to their princess. You must act upon Mars, Jupiter, or – "

"Mercury," said Pluto. She pointed her staff at the two mirrors side by side: a black-haired girl tossing in a bed as flames ignited, then extinguished alternately around her head, and a green-haired girl curled in a writhing ball on a sofa. "I shall go and cement their memory blocks more securely – even if their reincarnations awaken, they shall not be able to remember."

"Yet they will kill the Shittenou," said the other. "And create a chasm between Endymion and Serenity not soon mended."

A bitter expression crossed Pluto's face. "That will not stop them. Concern of others has never stopped Endymion from taking Serenity in the end."

"A wise Senshi of Time once told me," said her companion. "That all things are subject to change."

Pluto did not turn; she inserted her Time Key Staff into the mirror containing the green-haired girl.

"That wise Senshi," she said, "has changed her mind." And she disappeared into the mirror.

Her fellow Senshi lifted her eyebrows as she watched another mirror, in which a blonde-haired girl lay in bed with her back resolutely to the window and a brown-haired child lay on the floor, her body flickering in and out of existence like a faulty light bulb.

"Changed your mind about change, indeed," she murmured.

L

A/N: Please, give me your opinions. Give me your guesses, too; it always pleases me to hear your predictions. Rosetornado, how am I doing?


	16. Chapter 16

A/N: Okay, I think the story will finally start speeding up after this. Of course, I just jinxed it by saying that… On another note, sorry these chapters take so long to keep coming out. Real life and all that jazz, you know.

Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Sixteen: Asanuma's Return

L

In his hotel room, Asanuma lay on the king-size bed, tossing a stone up and down in his hand. The TV was on, and the boring eternity of soap operas, court shows, and toddler cartoons had finally given way to some primetime reality TV, but he paid little attention. This time yesterday, he had been doing the same thing, rotting of boredom as he wondered why in the hell his parents had insisted that he accompany them on this diplomatic excursion instead of staying home as he usually did.

After meeting Senator Hino this morning, however, he knew exactly why his parents had dragged him along.

_"Ah, Asanuma!" The black-haired man's eyes swept over him. Asanuma frowned. "It's been a while, young man, I trust you're doing well?"_

_"Well enough, sir." Asanuma wondered how the senator could be so jovial when his only daughter had been missing for months. Briefly, he remembered the blonde man from the dinner. Yet Hino was a politician, he committed these atrocities easily…_

_"I see…" The senator looked up then, smoothing his tie, then took a few steps down the hall into an alcove, motioning Asanuma to follow him. Asanuma did not miss the excited smile his mother shot him, but nor did he return it. He knew now, though, why he'd been brought along on the trip. He followed Hino silently into the alcove._

_Where the man's smile vanished like a mirage. "Do you know where she is?"_

_Asanuma pasted a confused expression atop his features. "Where who is, sir?"_

_"Don't play dumb with me!" Hino snarled. "I can whip your father's job out from under him with a snap of my fingers."_

_"Actually, you can't, sir," said Asanuma. "He was appointed by the prime minister, not the legislature. You don't have any jurisdiction."_

_He saw Hino's hand twitch. "You will tell me where my daughter is, or so help me, boy – "_

_"Your daughter?" Asanuma interrupted. "I haven't seen her since – what, the Christmas gala? What's her name again? Keiko?"_

_Hino's eyes glittered, not unlike Rei's, burning into him. Asanuma let the clueless smile on his face slip into confusion. "Wait – she went missing, didn't she?" he gasped. "Sir – I forgot, sir, I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do?"_

_Hino drew back, eyes slightly less piercing. "You go to school in Azabu."_

_"Yes, sir. Did you talk to her friends, sir?"_

_Hino turned away. "The sister said that she didn't have any friends."_

The stone landed in Asanuma's hand again. He clenched it tightly.

_The sister said that she didn't have any friends_.

Fury and guilt roared up in him. Scarcely thinking, he squeezed the rock tighter and let fire roar up around his palm to burn, burn, burn the stone –

Asanuma blinked suddenly. The fire around his fist had vanished abruptly, and there was a weight on his forehead.

He sat up. Beside the TV, a full-length mirror hung from the wall, and his shocked reflection stared at him.

His untucked dress shirt and business slacks were gone. They had been replaced by a outfit that looked like the mutant offspring of a King Arthur tunic and a martial arts _gi_.

"What the…" he muttered, shock gushing through him. He opened his palm, feeling a faint pulse of warmth, and stared at the stone that glowed within it. "You…?"

He traced it, noting the faint golden threads extending through the dark glassy stone. Motoki had given it to him, sometime during the summer, and he'd found it in his pocket. Thinking back…

Asanuma's eyes widened. "Damn!" he exclaimed, not angrily, but in shock, almost cheer. He rolled across the bed, eyes still glued to his strange reflection, and grabbed the phone.

"Unazuki? Yeah, can you give me Toki? Thanks…TOKI!"

Two islands away, Motoki held the phone away from his ear. "Numa? Are you back?"

"What? No. That's not important!" Asanuma scrambled off his bed, pushing to his feet. He barely noticed the incredible weariness weighing Motoki's voice an octave lower than normal. "Listen, you remember those stones you picked up in the road forever ago?"

"Uhhhh…"

"The smooth ones! The ones you gave me that whole metaphorical lecture with, you know!" Asanuma nearly danced with impatience.

"Um – yeah, that's the order from the corner table – "

"TOKI!"

"Sorry! Stones – um, over the summer? Oh, yeah, I remember them – what about them?"

"Did your electricity start before then or after?" Asanuma demanded.

Silence filled the other end of the phone.

"Toki – "

"I'm thinking!" Motoki snapped.

"Fine!" Asanuma subsided.

At last, a sigh whooshed from the other end. "God. You're right."

"I haven't even said what I was going to say yet!"

"Everything started after we picked up those stones," said Motoki, ignoring him. "And I've had mine in my apron pocket ever since… God, what are the odds…"

"There are no odds!" said Asanuma indignantly. "It was fate!"

Motoki um-hmmmed inattentively.

"Well, listen, I found something out!" Asanuma continued. "I was tossing my stone up and down, and then I lit it on fire, and _I changed_."

"…like Ben Ten?"

"NO! My clothes! They changed! I look like a knight without the armor or something!" Asanuma paused, frowning. He pulled the red fabric from his throat and peered down his chest like a woman checking her cleavage. "Scratch that, I've got armor, too."

THUMP.

"Toki?" Asanuma heard panicked sounds on the other end of the telephone, scuffling of feet.

Then a voice picked up the phone. "Asanuma?"

"Unazuki! What happened?"

"Uh, nii-chan just fainted. Were you guys talking about something naughty – "

"Oh no! Bad connection! Unazuki, are you there? I can't hear you! Oh, no, I – " Asanuma hung up. Then, grinning a little at Toki's reaction, he tossed the phone on the bed and returned to examining his new outfit.

Then he realized. "OH NO! How do I change back?"

L

Serena struggled to throw off the sense of déjà vu that kept buzzing about her like a fly as she walked down the darkening street toward home with Rini. An extra unnerving sensation was the last thing she needed after the eventful day she'd had…her first day talking to Darien again, ripping her skirt, finding out that Lita's previous incarnation was making a bid for freedom and wanted to kill Toki, and now poor Lita…

"He didn't walk us home today."

"Huh?" Serena blinked at Rini, wondering why she had called Lita 'he.' Then she realized that Rini wasn't referring to Rini at all; she meant Darien. "Oh. No, he didn't."

"Why was everyone so surprised that her hair was green?"

Serena tilted her head. She felt quite sure that she did not understand this child. She also felt quite sure that she wanted to understand her. In some ways, Rini reminded her of Darien even more than Buji did. "Well," she said, "do you know anyone with green hair where you live?"

Rini seemed about to say something, but when she glanced up at Serena and saw her looking at her curiously, she sewed her lips shut and shrugged.

"Hey – " Serena realized something suddenly. "Rini, you know you can't tell anyone about this, right? About Lita's hair and the Senshi and all – "

Rini snorted. "I'm not stupid."

"I know you're not," said Serena patiently. She paused. "You don't have to take everything as an attack, you know."

Rini grunted. "Did anyone find out when Asanuma's coming back?"

"I don't think so," said Serena. "But hey, I've got an idea. It must have been really boring sitting around Lita's apartment all day – I don't know, at least I would have been bored, I mean – well, what I mean is, do you wanna come to school with me tomorrow?"

Rini looked up at her with disapproving eyebrows. "Don't you think someone'll notice a six-year-old walking around a high school with you?"

"They won't notice if they can't see you." Serena grinned as – with clear reluctance – Rini's expression was tugged into something like curiosity.

"What are you talking about, meatball brain?"

Serena barely noticed the insult as she reached into her pocket – actually her Subspace pocket, but Rini didn't have to know that. She pulled it out and waved it over Rini's head. "This is the Luna Pen."

Rini followed its path with her eyes as they walked. "_More _pink?" she said.

Serena frowned momentarily. "I thought you liked pink! Your hair was pink."

"Ever notice how when you're around something a lot you start to hate it?" said Rini. "I hate pink."

"Oh…" Serena bit her lip, but only part of her was thinking about the pink clothes and bed accessories she'd chosen for Rini.

"Anyway…?" Rini prompted pointedly. "Please tell me you're not going to draw a mustache on me and say that no one'll recognize me then."

"_Nooo_," said Serena. "It's a magic pen."

Rini stared scornfully at her. "Yeah, and you're from the moon, right?"

Serena pouted. "I mean it! Look!" They had reached her house, and she grabbed Rini's hand, pulling her upstairs to her room. She locked the door behind her, then stood in the middle of the room and posed. "Luna Pen, please turn me into…Lita!"

Lights flashed, Serena felt her limbs stretching and hardening into leaner muscle. The lights faded, and when she grinned down at Rini, the little girl looked much shorter.

"See?" she crowed. Then she cleared her throat, momentarily surprised by the sound of her words in Lita's voice.

"Where'd you get that?" demanded Rini.

"I – from Sailor Moon," Serena changed her sentence around hastily. "Since I hang around with them so much, she gave me this so that I can transform and no one'll recognize me."

Rini pursed her lips. "So you're going to turn me into a high school student?"  
"Well, I was thinking of something easier," admitted Serena. "Like…invisible."

"You can do that?" Rini peered up at her, and Serena realized she didn't like being quite so tall. She squeezed the Luna Pen and felt herself shrink back to her normal size.

"Yeah," she said, wrinkling her nose as she thought. "But I guess it would probably be easier for you if you looked like a student, wouldn't it… I mean, you could sit and stuff… and I'll just tell them you're my cousin. Yeah, let's try it! Here, stand here."

Looking uncertain for one of the few times Serena had seen, Rini went to the spot that Serena had indicated in the center of her room. She held out her hand for the pen.

"Oh, it only works if I say it," said Serena, a little abashedly. "Sorry."

"I thought it was Sailor Moon's?" said Rini.

"Yeah, but she…used her magic to make it so only I could use it," said Serena. She wondered for a second why she was bothering to hide her identity from Rini when the little girl knew who everyone else was. She shook it away and planted a hand atop Rini's soft, spiky brown hair and said, "Luna Pen, please turn Rini into a high school junior!"

Lights flashed again, and when they disappeared, Serena found herself staring at someone's nose.

She took a step backward. "You're taller than me!"

"Who isn't?" said Rini, a little note of – was it _mischievous_, thought Serena with slight shock – laughter in her voice.

"HEY!" Serena protested, and mock-glared at the girl who was now taller than her. She sighed then, and took another step back to look Rini up and down. "You look really pretty, Rini. You've got, like, perfect arms and legs."

Examining Rini's uniform, Serena missed the strange, flushed expression that flittered across Rini's usually stern face. The transformed girl's long, slender limbs were accentuated by the fitted white school blazer that the Luna Pen had dressed her in, with a pleated navy blue skirt a little shorter than Serena's school fuku to match. Serena didn't recognize the uniform from any of the school around, and she commended the Luna Pen for dressing Rini in something that really would look like Rini was a cousin come from somewhere far away to visit.

"We have to do something with your hair, though," said Serena, eying the long brown hair that fell loose to Rini's waist. "You'll go crazy with it down all day, believe me. But – " she tapped her nose thoughtfully, then grinned sheepishly. "I'm not very good with braids. We could ask Darien – "

"No," said Rini.

"Okay." Serena's internal grimace of relief mirrored Rini's. "Could I put your hair in buns? I know how to do that!"

"Like yours?" said Rini, eyeing her doubtfully in the mirror. Serena giggled at the sight of little Rini's dour expression on big Rini's face. Her eyelashes were even longer than before! "What's funny?"

"You're just so cute," said Serena, unable to contain it, although she knew it would just make Rini glare. "I don't know if you're cuter as a little kid or now…" And she resisted the almost overwhelming urge to give Rini a hug. Then a strange, almost pained expression contorted her face. "Oh, my."

"What?" demanded Rini, looking around.

Serena looked back at her seriously. "We're going to have to beat the boys away from you."

Rini wilted. Serena burst into laughter. Then she grabbed a brush, pushed Rini down into the chair, and set to work.

L

"Pluto? What the hell – ?" Haruka backpedaled in shock, knocking over a lamp on the corner table, as the woman with whom she and Michiru had been corresponding for months walked into the living room.

The Senshi ignored her, walking straight past Michiru and Haruka where they sat on the sofa and beginning up the stairs.

Haruka jumped to her feet, loping after her. She jumped around her and barred the way with her arms. "Pluto, what are you DOING here?"

"I have business with Mars." Pluto rapped her staff on the stair. "Move aside, Uranus."

Haruka didn't move. "What are going to do with her?"

"I ordered you to inform me if her dreams of the Silver Millennium grew more frequent!" Pluto rapped her staff again – suddenly, she stood on the other side of Haruka and was striding toward the closed door at the end of the hallway. "You did not follow my order, and you have endangered our princess – not to mention that you have made NO progress in discovering the talismans!"

Pluto spun, eyes flashing, away from Haruka and Michiru, who had come up the stairs behind her, and clipped into Rei's room. The two other Senshi followed her, Haruka's face tempestuous and Michiru's concerned. They watched from the doorway as Pluto stopped in front of the black-haired girl tossing in the bed. The air around Rei was smeared and warped by the heat that radiated from her skin.

Pluto did not turn around. "Leave."

"Plu – "

"LEAVE." The door swung shut in Haruka's face, nearly crushing her fingers. She slammed a fist into it. "PLUTO!"

"It was always a gamble," said Michiru softly beside her. "We knew she would probably find out."

"I don't trust her!" Haruka railed. "A few more days, and Rei would have seen her in the dreams, and we would have known who the princess is! Why doesn't she want us to find out?"

"We've already had this conversation, 'Ruka," Michiru soothed, leading her back downstairs. "Don't worry, we still have a lead. Sailor Moon, remember? We saw the cut on her leg, she's definitely Serena Tsukino. We can find out what she knows. But not if you antagonize Pluto into removing all of our memories."  
Haruka's fists unclenched. She glanced back over her shoulder, at the crack of silvery light glowing out from beneath Rei's door. Rei had been _so close _to seeing the princess's face… They would have known, would have been able to find her and protect her, and then Pluto would have had to give them their memories back – but now – _now_… they would have to pursue the Sailor Moon lead, and pursuing Sailor Moon meant dealing with _him_ –

"Don't worry about the prince," said Michiru softly from her side. "I'll take care of him. You just focus on Serena."

L

"This meager amount is not a drop in the bucket to what I require to repair the crystals." The Wiseman folded his shimmering skeletal fingers around the tiny glowing ball of energy that had been brought to him by the only youma not eliminated by Sailor Senshi.

The Wiseman turned to the white-clad man in the corner. "More drastic actions are needed. The Senshi easily disposed of the lower-level droids."

"Mmm." Diamond waved a hand, his eyes focused on the viewpad he held in his hand.

The Wiseman evaporated from the room. He reappeared in one that was not so dark, and filled with the sound of quiet conversation between the half-dozen beings within.

"Rubeus," said the Wiseman, and a red-haired man unfolded himself to his feet.

"Your prince conveys orders that you take a team to earth. There you will both obtain energy to send back to the ship and search for the child."

Rubeus inclined his head. "As His Highness wishes." He turned. 'Sisters?"

L

When he turned sixteen, Motoki's parents had given him the room over the garage as his own. He was climbing the stairs up to that room, feeling as though nothing else could possibly go wrong after the day he'd just had, when the screech of brakes and shattering glass and the shrill of a scream slammed into his ears.

He spun, keys falling from his hand. "Holy - !" He snatched his keys and jammed them back into his pocket, then loped down the stairs three at a time.

The smell of burned rubber grew strong in his nostrils as he rounded a corner three blocks away, just before the shopping district. Motoki stopped behind a tree and took in the scene: a car that had veered off the road and crashed into an empty "For Lease" storefront – he could see the driver crumpled over the wheel – and in the middle of the street, surrounded by a nimbus of glowing energy and unconscious bodies, stood a youma that was twice as tall as Lita and twice as endowed on top. Then Motoki saw a black shadow dart from the corner of his vision.

"Ooh," said the monster as Tuxedo Mask – Darien, Motoki realized with a strange, rippling disbelief, for it was still so strange to think that it was his dour friend beneath the dramatic cape and top hat – landed in a crouch a meter from her. "Where did the pretty blonde go? I was hoping to see her!"

Tuxedo Mask didn't say anything, just hurled a dozen roses. Suddenly there was a cane in his hand, and a blade as long as Motoki's arm hissing out of it. Motoki stared at it, awed.

Then a chuckle from behind him snatched his attention. He spun, just in time to get bashed in the face.

Motoki flew backward like a Frisbee. His arc gradually carried him to the ground, and he skidded across the sidewalk, yelling inarticulately as the pavement shredded his back like cheese. The side of a building finally arrested his movement. Gasping and gagging, he rolled over limply and forced his shaking arms to push him up. Blood pooled in his mouth behind his gums; he struggled to his feet, and as he wavered over his knees, two teeth tumbled out of his mouth to roll across the sidewalk.

Even as he stared at them in horror, he remembered the dark, tall woman who had kicked him, and he struggled around, sucking in a breath to warn Darien. "Da – Tuxedo Mask!" he shouted.

"Shut up!" The woman melted back into the pool of streetlight, annoyance crackling on her face. She aimed another kick at him. "Can't you see I'm trying to surprise him?"

Over her booted leg speeding toward him, Motoki saw Tuxedo Mask's dark figure fighting two shadows – one was the youma, the other was a woman, but that was all he could glimpse before the woman's leg hit his neck with the force of a tree branch whipping in a thunderstorm. He vomited out a gush of air but seized her knee. Then, with the same mighty wrench he had used to throw the frat guys who had bothered Lita out of the arcade, he heaved the woman over his shoulder.

He heard her impact on the pavement, all metallic clangs and pained gasps, and he seized the moment. Motoki didn't know how to fight, he'd only halfheartedly trained with Asanuma, and shrugged off sparring with Lita; now, he thrust his hand into the air and summoned, teeth gritting as it crackled up his skeleton, the strongest bolt of pure electricity he had ever channeled.

It tore up into the sky like a jackrabbit tearing away from its prey, bounding up toward the stars in a streak of bluish-white. When it faded, Motoki hurled up another one, and another, willing Lita or Serena to see it and come, and another one – then a hard foot slammed into his midsection, and he doubled over.

"Well, what have we here?" said the woman's derisive voice. "And we thought that blonde Senshi was the only one who bothered around here."

Her cold fingers seized him around the throat and lifted him into the air. Motoki gagged, feeling his Adam's apple grinding against the back of his throat. Gasping, he let the electricity that he had been building up flow into the gloved fingers that gripped him.

Her lack of response was disturbing. Through tearing eyes, he saw her grin widely. "You're not the only one who can use electricity, boy."

Pain explodedacross his body. He had no breath to scream with agony, no breath to fight away from her… he watched silently from behind his eyelids as red dots detonated behind his eyelids and then, gradually, faded. So this was why Darien, Serena, and Lita had never been as excited about having powers as Asanuma was…

The electrocution drove him so far out of his consciousness that he did not realize that her fingers had let him go and that he lay on the sidewalk for at least a whole minute after it happened. At last, the fog receded from his vision and he stared at the puddle of bloody drool in front of his nose on the sidewalk his cheek was pressed against. He levered himself up, hissing at the shooting pains across his still-crackling, charred skin, and looked up.

In the dimness outside the streetlights' reach, two hazy shadows still darted around each other in blurs, one with a cape flying behind it.

Inside the pool of light, where he knelt, two tall women grappled silently. The only sound came from static burst of electricity that flickered crazily up and down their arms like bracelets.

"What…_are _you?" panted the woman who had kicked Motoki. In the light, he could see that she had dark hair pulled back in a tight bun, and the strange shape of her shoulders was because of some sort of feathery boa. He noticed it, but barely registered it, too occupied by the other figure, the one who had forced the woman's back into an awkward, painful angle as they wrestled. "A man under a gender spell?"

Sailor Jupiter did not reply. Motoki knew it was Sailor Jupiter and not Lita because Lita would never have let such a comment go without a scathing retort. This tall, green-haired Senshi's only retort was to pivot faster than Motoki could follow and to deal the women a kick to the chest so hard that she shot backward and crashed through the windshield of a car parked a whole block away.

Motoki, still on his knees, snatched his eyes from the prone figure of the woman to stare at Sailor Jupiter. She stood still as a statue, her back to him; then her shoulder slumped and she began to pant.

"Motoki," she said in Lita's voice, ragged with effort – to keep from killing him, he imagined. And for some reason, that thought made his heart wring so much that he knew he had never loved anyone more in his entire life. "Are you okay?"

He wasn't quite capable of speech yet. He spat out another mouthful of blood and made as affirmative-sounding a grunt as he could.

At that moment, a shriek split the air, and then a flash of light – no, two? Motoki looked around confusedly.

A dark shadow entered their pool of light – no, it was Tuxedo Mask.

"My opponent left as soon as she saw what happened to yours." Darien tore off his hat, which Motoki was surprised had stayed on all that time, and came to stand in front of Motoki. His mask was opaque, Motoki realized as his friend turned his head toward Lita, giving Motoki his profile – it made him look like a ghost.

"Those weren't youma," Mask said to Lita.

"No." Lita turned around, but her eyes stared determinedly past the both of them. "Too powerful. And too human-like. Beryl clones?"

"They smelled too good for that." Tuxedo Mask turned back to Motoki and drew something glowing from within his vest pocket. Motoki, staring at it and feeling a gush of warmth spread to every nerve in his body, realized that it was the Golden Crystal. He had seen it and felt its effects once before, when Darien healed Asanuma, but now he felt a sudden warmth in his own pocket, almost burning him. Slowly, as if hypnotized, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the rock that he had picked up from the ground with Asanuma months ago. In the split second he managed to tear his eyes away from Darien's light-pulsing Golden Crystal, he saw that his stone was glowing, a soft deep green not unlike Lita's eyes.

He missed, in the euphoric awe that had threaded into him, the sensation of new teeth slipping through his gums and his burned, scraped flesh peeling and smoothing into unscarred tissue. It was only as he watched Darien push back his own sleeve to reveal a gaping red stab wound that faded into a scab and then uninjured skin that Motoki realized his own wounds had been healed.

Then footsteps, pounding on the pavement, yanked his attention upward.

"You…guys!" panted a familiar voice. Serena came barreling around the corner, nearly falling onto an unconscious body as she tripped over another. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," said Lita. She had turned away again. "I'm… going to leave."

"Lita!" Serena cried out, but Lita had already landed on the rooftop above them, and kicked off again.

"What…" Darien's voice was half-muttering as he rose from his crouch. "…Rini…?"

Motoki looked past Serena and saw only a vague shadow behind her.

"She's safe!" said Serena hastily. "We're going home right now – just had to check – bye!"

Two pairs of footsteps pounded back down the sidewalk again, fading from earshot.

Motoki looked back at Darien, whose confused expression had morphed into irritation. "She _knows _she shouldn't go out at night alone…" The masked high schooler muttered. "She was probably in pajamas, too, wasn't she?"

"Um," rasped Motoki. A groan from a person reviving a few feet away saved him from having to answer in the affirmative.

"Let's go," sighed Tuxedo Mask.

L

"Sailor Moon didn't go to that fight?" Rini wanted to know when they climbed back into Serena's window. She stepped on her hair as she swung a leg over the window sill and tumbled to land in a knotted heap on the floor.

Serena bit back a laugh as she ran to help Rini, who batted her away.

"Guess you haven't gotten used to that body yet," she said apologetically.

"It's this stupid hairstyle!" Rini's cheeks burned, and she yanked herself up to her feet and unflipped her skirt.

Serena thought that her unexpected tumble would have distracted Rini from her question, but the child pinned her with a stare. "Well?"

"Well what?" Serena occupied herself with using the Luna Pen to return Rini to her normal size. Her clothes returned to overalls, but her hair stayed in buns with short streamers of hair that brushed her chin.

"Why wasn't Sailor Moon there?"

"Maybe she was, and she left before Lita did," Serena said casually, as though it was no big deal. "Or maybe everyone else decided to give her a break today. She's been fighting all the youma for the past two days…" She trailed off at the expression on Rini's face. "What?"

"How do you know all of this?" Rini demanded. "How'd you even know that there was a fight?"

"Um," said Serena. All she could think of was Darien telling her that she couldn't lie worth a cow, quickly succeeded by her own voice chirping, _Honesty is the best policy_!

"I have a telepathic link – " she blurted out before she managed to nail her tongue to the bottom of her mouth. She stared at Rini in horror. "…with Sailor Jupiter," she finished in a squeak.

Rini stared at her. "You're telepathically linked to Lita."

Serena resisted the urge to slap herself upside the head. How low WAS her IQ? She couldn't have at least been smart enough to say that she had a link with her own alter ego, not Lita's? _I was panicking!_

"Uh-huh," said Serena, climbing hastily into bed. "I can sense when she transforms and stuff."

"Uh-_huh_," said Rini. The look she gave to Serena indicated that she believed her not a bit.

L

The sun had not even peeked over the horizon when Serena was shaken away by Rini the next morning.

"Huh?" she mumbled, flailing her limbs in the air like an overturned turtle. "Wha - ?"

"Get up." Rini gave her another shove.

"But it's SIX-THIRTY," moaned Serena, blinking blearily at the clock.

"Yeah, well, if I can't sleep because of you jerking all over and whimpering in bed, then you don't get to, either."

Serena's eyes opened to her normal proportions. She kicked aside her blankets, feeling a flush climb up her neck. She'd woken Rini with her nightmares…

"Besides, we need to get ready," said Rini.

Serena looked at the clock again. Six-thirty. School didn't start until 8:30. She hadn't even taken two hours to get ready for the _Spring Fling_.

But she kept her mouth shut and dragged herself to the bathroom to get washed up and changed. When she returned Rini was pulling at her hairbuns in the mirror, bent over nearly double.

"How do you…get these things out?" she gasped.

Serena laughed despite the glare Rini shot at her. "Like THIS." She sat Rini on the chair and untwisted the little loop in the streamer of hair. She deftly undid the other one and grabbed a brush. "Hang on, you made a big snarl back here. Hand me that detangler spray please?"

"I can do it myself," began Rini, but Serena ignored her, humming loudly.

"Indulge me, won't you?" she said after a few minutes. "You don't know what a relief it is to brush hair that ISN'T twenty feet long."

Rini's reflection eyed her suspiciously in the mirror. "Why IS your hair so long?"

"Oh, look at the time!" Serena re-bunned Rini's hair. "Here, we'd better transform you – Luna Pen, please turn Rini into the high school – "

"Wait!" hissed Rini. "Your parents will see me!"

"Oops." Serena lowered the pen. "Yeah, you're right."

Rini grimaced. Why was it that she'd gotten herself stuck with the dullest crayon in the box again? Oh, yeah – because that was the safest.

L

Rini followed Serena carefully down the hallway, keeping her face blank but sweeping the surroundings with her eyes. She had begun to grow more used to seeing only dark hair, but she felt uncomfortable in the large body – and all the people who watched them from the corner of their eyes.

They stared at Serena's scars, probably, Rini knew, and she wondered again how the blonde had gotten them. Probably from bumbling into a youma fight – she seemed like the sort to trip right into an attack. She also wondered why the blonde hadn't told all the starers to take a picture and get over it.

At last Serena stopped in front of a door and entered. Rini followed her and stiffened as shrieks and gasps convulsed the classroom.

"Ha ha…" Serena grinned at the students falling over their desks and clutching their hearts. "I CAN be on time SOMETIMES."

The laughter from her classmates continued as Serena led Rini to the desk in the corner, where a red-haired woman sat wiping tears of mirth from her eyes.

"Who's your friend, Serena?" said the woman – the teacher, Rini figured. Her eyes rested upon Rini in her borrowed uniform and lingered on her hairbuns.

"This is my cousin Rini," said Serena in a strange voice. Rini internally rolled her eyes; couldn't this girl lie at ALL? "She's here for a visit. Do you think that it would be okay if she tagged along with me today?"

"I don't see why not," replied Miss Haruna. "I'll send to the office for a visitor's pass. It's very nice to meet you, Rini-san."

Rini bowed politely. "The pleasure is mine, Haruna-sensei."

The bell rang just then, and students scrambled to their desks.

"Hmm," said Miss Haruna. "It appears that Lita isn't here today. Why don't you sit next to Serena, Rini-san?"

"Lita's not here?" Rini heard Serena murmur as they went to the two empty desks in the back of the classroom. Rini resisted the urge to really roll her eyes at Serena's talking to herself aloud. Her juvenescence was really beginning to grate of her. "I wonder where she is…"

Rini sat and set her long arms on Lita's desk. Covertly she examined the desktop for any sign that it was Lita's desk… a charred spot, a curved sigil of Jupiter – but no, that would have been stupid and a security risk to her identity. The sort of thing _Serena_ would do if she was a Senshi, not Lita.

She sighed and settled in for a long and incomprehensible math lesson. Beside her, Serena dropped into a half-doze, drooping over her desk. Rini looked on disapprovingly; although the precalculus on the board was far beyond her understanding, it shouldn't be beyond Serena's.

Back at home at school, she'd just learned the times tables up to twelve with Asanuma…

_"Uh-oh. Multiplication? Sorry, Rini, I won't be able to help you with your homework anymore – I never got a hold of all that two plus two equals four stuff." Asanuma winked at her as he pulled off his jacket in the front hallway._

_"Asanuma!" Rini stomped her foot and grinned up at him, for they both knew the other was feigning._

_"Okay, kiddo." He sat the grocery bag down on the table and swung her up onto the counter. "Just lemme get the curry started, okay?" And he chopped vegetables while Rini showed him the flashcards they'd made in class and told him how Kitade Tai had stolen her odango from her lunchbox and she'd kicked him in the shins and he'd cried. And then Asanuma let out a yelp and said that they didn't have any carrots, and she needed her Vitamin A if she wasn't going to have to wear nerdy glasses like her dad, and Rini tried to summon a carrot, but all she managed was one the size of her thumbs, and Asanuma tickled her with it –_

Rini didn't realize that tears had escaped her eyes until a hot drop hit her arm. She rubbed it away and blinked down at the desk until the tears seeped back into her eyeballs. Then she looked back up and watched as Serena, called by Miss Haruna to the board to solve a problem, made the class laugh with her unabashed cluelessness, and Rini felt disgusted that someone could act so carefree.

L

"This is the class I usually have with Asanuma," Serena informed her as they approached the gymnasium. She led Rini to her locker, then frowned thoughtfully as she unlocked it. "I don't think Coach'll make you do anything. But just in case – " She glanced around and whipped out the pink pen. "Luna Pen, please put Rini in PE clothes!"

"Serena," began Rini, but by the time she had finished the blonde's name, a white t-shirt and red shorts had already replaced her uniform. Rini looked around, much more thoroughly than Serena had, and hissed, "What if someone had seen?"

"They didn't, I checked." Serena stowed the pen, which Rini was beginning to think very dangerous, back into her pocket. For that matter, why was she keeping such a powerful object in her POCKET? What if it fell out? What then? Serena was misusing and endangering Sailor Moon's valuable gift to her!

A whistle blew then, shrilly, and Serena squealed, flying into a stall with an armful of clothing. "I've gotta get changed!"

The girl was useless, really, Rini realized as Serena emerged sheepishly a few minutes later. They headed out onto a set of basketball courts, and Rini tried to figure out why a powerful Senshi like Sailor Moon, who had stood up even to _him_, was on such obnoxiously good terms with _Serena…_

"Hey, Serena-chaaan," called a voice. Rini followed it with her eyes to a group of grungy-looking boys leaning against the corner of the gym. "The costume store called, they want their mask back!"

Rini flicked her contemptuous gaze from the guffawing adolescents to Serena. She remembered the unbelievably fast kick that Lita had used to pin the guy who messed with her.

All Serena did was quicken her pace and keep her eyes resolutely on the patchily clouded blue sky.

"Well, this is my role call spot," she told Rini brightly.

Rini barely heard her. Disgust seemed like a furry caterpillar crawling through her insides. What a coward!

"Oh, here comes Coach," said Serena, shading her eyes from the sun. Rini ignored her, crossing her arms and glaring balefully. But when a voice exploded behind her, it was harder to ignore.

"So THIS is your cousin, Tsukino?"

Rini turned to regard the source of the voice and found herself nose-to-nose with a short, very muscular man with a bristling mustache and a baseball cap.

His clipboard clattered to the ground, and he stared at her with jaw slightly agape.

"Tsu – Tsukino! She has YOUR LEGS! But TALLER!" he bellowed in awe. "Like an Arabian thoroughbred, like a mighty cheetah – "

"What the – " exploded from Rini before Serena's hand clapped over her mouth.

"Tsukino's-cousin-san!" exclaimed the coach to her, apparently totally ignorant of the hand clapped over her mouth. "What school are you from? Why have I not seen you at any of the track meets? What must I promise you to transfer to our school and join the track team?"

"Um – Coach – she doesn't speak Japanese very well – she's from, um, Zimbabwe, you know," said Serena, in the stupidest lie that Rini had heard from her yet (including the one about having a telepathic bond with Lita).

"Oh. I…see," said the coach, very slowly and clearly. Rini's annoyance flared at it being her who looked like a half-witted idiot. "We…will…talk…later...Tsukino's…cousin-san. I…will…be…back."

And then he zoomed back the way he had come.

Rini peeled Serena's hand from her mouth. "Where'd he go?"

"Probably to find a Zimbabwean dictionary," said Serena. "We should – " Something splattered on the side of her head and then plummeted to the ground.

They looked down. It was a spitball. It created a puddle on the gum-dotted pavement.

Rini's narrowed eyes flicked in the direction of the grungy boys, who had erupted into roars of laughter again. "You're just going to let them do that?"

"It doesn't hurt me." Serena smiled and shrugged. "Besides, it's only because Asanuma's not here. They'll stop when he's back."

"You're an idiot," muttered Rini. Asanuma was the only person she loved in the whole world, but she would sooner die than be so dependent on him.

"Huh?" said Serena.

"Nothing," said Rini, louder.

"HIYASHI!" Coach's voice roared from out of the locker rooms. "I SAW THAT! FIFTY PUSH-UPS! _USING YOUR FACE!_"

Serena shrugged again, smiling at Rini. "And plus, Coach's punishments are way worse than mine could ever be."

L

Rini noticed Serena hesitating as they waited for the lunch bell to ring. It was the same hesitation as the day she'd stood in front her house before introducing Rini to her parents.

Rini crossed her arms, then lowered them again, discomfited by the different shape of her chest. "What's your problem this time?"

"Problem?" Serena glanced up at her. "No problem."

Blondie sucked at a lot of things, but she REALLY sucked at lying.

"Then why is your finger bleeding?" said Rini.

Serena looked down at where she had bitten her fingernail to the quick.

"Oh," she said. "That. Well, I'm just worried about Lita."

Rini was silent.

"I guess we should go find Motoki and…Darien," said Serena. "We never got to talk at lunch yesterday. But I need to see if someone's here first – "

"Hey, Serena-chan!" A dark-haired girl hopped over one of the benches outside the gymnasium and walked up to her, giving Rini a polite smile.

"Hey, Hikada-chan," said Serena, smiling. "I like your earrings!"

"Thanks!" Hikada pushed her hair back from the rainbows dangling from her ears. "I was wondering, do you know where Miss Lanai is? She wasn't in class again today, and she's been gone for a while…"

"She's still not here?" Serena's brows knit. "No, I don't know. She told me she was going to an art exhibition in America. Maybe she's decided to take a little extra rest and relaxation."

Rini's brows also furrowed as she watched Serena.

"I guess," said Hikada. "Hey, if you ever wanna borrow my charcoals, just ask, okay? I saw one of your sketches the other day, you're getting along really well."

Serena perked up. "Thanks, Hikada-chan! I will!"

"Why did you lie to her?" asked Rini as the other girl walked away.

The smile crumbled from Serena's face as she glanced over at Rini. "Am I really so transparent?" she asked quietly, almost as if she spoke to herself.

"Pathetically so," said Rini. Could it be that Serena actually realized the extent of all her shortcomings? Rini certainly hoped so – and although she'd decided that all these shortcomings would make Serena the safest person for her to stay with until Asanuma came, the one least likely to uncover who she was, she was beginning to think that the opposite was true. Serena was useless – and seemed to lie frequently. Rini was beginning to wonder what else she was hiding.

L

Darien could feel the puckered, dead spot in the ground, like a scab, where Lita's lightning had stabbed the day before. He crouched beside it and let his hand hover above it. The sensation of energy being pulled from him was like the thread of stitches being slowly withdrawn from his flesh; it made his knees buckle; he landed heavily on the ground.

"Didn't you learn ANYTHING from last weekend?" He felt and heard feet darting across the soil of the earth of the courtyard, then a waft of Serena's scent entering his senses. His eyes floated shut as he waited for her to hold a hand to his forehead and check him for injury as she had done so many times – then, when the expected touch never arrived, he remembered. His eyes opened hastily.

"Are you okay?" demanded her voice. "Here, Rini, there's water in my bag – "

Darien pushed away the gnawing disappointment to focus on the surrounding area: he felt the light weight of Serena's feet pushing down on the ground directly in front of him, and the heavier weight of Rini – _heavier_?

"Who's with you?" Darien demanded. The scent, the faint tang of the perspiration from constantly clenched fists, that he had come to associate with Rini touched his nose, but Rini should not exert so much pressure on the ground. But it was too light for Motoki –

"Um, about that," said Serena's voice. "I kind of transformed Rini into a high school student so she could follow me around today."

As if on cue, there was a sudden cry from the other end of the courtyard. Darien sensed Motoki's stab of surprise before he heard it.

"SERENA?" exclaimed the senior's voice. He pattered rapidly toward them. "Your hair, too –!" Darien felt him stop dead on the grass. "Wait – you're not Serena – "

"It's Rini," said Serena. Darien felt her sit on the grass, a few feet away from him. "I used the Luna Pen. Does he know about that?" she asked, in an aside to Darien.

"Yes," replied Darien, more stiffly than he intended. He was immensely glad that Serena had returned to talking to him in the familiar way she once had; he wished that he could reciprocate. He cleared his throat as he felt curiosity gathering at the edges of his periphery like storm clouds. "Sit down, Motoki, you're drawing attention."

Motoki lowered himself upon the crunching dead grass. "You look just like Serena," he said to Rini. "With the hair buns and everything – "

"She's taller, though," said Serena, unmistakable pride coloring her voice. Darien felt Rini shift. He barely noticed, too busy trying to imagine what Rini – whom he had never seen in the first place – looked like in a teenager's body with odangos like Serena's. All her could muster was an image of a scowling Serena with brown hair.

Motoki cleared his throat. "I didn't see Lita today," he said hesitantly.

"She's not here today," said Serena, the worry in her voice as obvious as his was masked. "I'm going to go see her after school. I want to make sure she's okay after last night."

"She's okay," said Darien, again, stonily. "That youma thing barely managed to land a punch."

"Youma thing?" repeated Serena. He felt the air shift and pictured her looking back and forth between them. "You weren't fighting youma?"

"There was a youma – a proper one, not one of the black ones – and then two humans with powers."

"Like…the Shittenou?" asked Serena.

"Beryl is the closest comparison I could make," said Darien. Then his ears detected a whisper of sound from beside Serena. "What was that, Rini?"

He sensed her jerk. For a moment, she was stubbornly silent, then she said clearly, "The Four Sisters."

"You know them, Rini?" asked Serena.

Rini's answer was a question. "What did they look like?"

Darien shrugged, but Motoki said, "The one I…_Lita_ fought wore some sort of boa and had dark hair – " He hesitated. "I could be wrong, but I'd swear it was green."

"It was," said Rini. Reluctantly, she continued, "That was Prizma. She's the oldest."

"How do you know them?" Darien said, suspicion lacing his voice.

Again, Rini hesitated. "They're part of the terrorist group that attacked my home. The Black Moon. But I don't know how they got here."

"Where are you FROM?" Darien demanded, frustration amplifying the suspicion in his tone. "I looked that up from when you mentioned it before. But there _is _no Black Moon terrorist group."

"Darien," Serena began heatedly. "Let her be – "

"No," Darien cut her off, "she's LYING to us! Aren't you, Rini?"

Rini suddenly looked as if she was about to cry. But she stomped her foot. "So what if I am lying to you?" she demanded, chin jutting out defiantly. "I don't KNOW any of you! You say you know Asanuma, but I've been here for days and he hasn't shown up yet, and I haven't seen Sailor Moon again either!"

Darien opened his mouth, brows knitted, to speak.

"She's right, Darien." Serena beat him to it. "What would you be doing if you were in her place? You wouldn't even have stayed with us this long."

Darien opened his mouth to say that yes, even if he didn't trust any of the others, he would have known Serena was trustworthy, even if a little airheaded, and he would have stayed. But then Motoki threw his arms up in the air.

"That's it!" he exclaimed. "Asanuma's been giving us enough trouble! I'm calling that emo loser right now, and you can talk to him, Rini, and we'll get this all sorted out! I should have told him about you when I talked to him yesterday, anyway!" He took out his cell phone and scrolled through the phone book. "Here." He shoved it at Rini.

Rini took the phone and held it to her ear with such an intense expression of concentration upon her face that her cheekbones jutted out like cliffs.

"You talked to Asanuma?" Darien said to Motoki.

Motoki colored slightly. "Yeah, I, uh, have to talk to you about that. He found something out…"

"Asanuma!" burst from Rini suddenly. An expression brighter than sunrise lit her face aglow –

Then was just as quickly extinguished.

She lowered the phone from her ear and handed it back to Motoki. "It was a message."

Motoki took it back and, seeing the way she wrapped her long arms around her stomach and stared at the ground, shut the phone without leaving a message. Serena reached out to squeeze Rini's hand, but the girl pulled it away.

"I want to see Sailor Moon!" she said suddenly, swinging her blue glare up to all of them.

Serena opened her mouth, Darien kicked her – and then the bell rang.

"Ooh, too bad," said Darien, shooting to his feet and snatching Serena's bag up from the ground. "No time, you'll have to wait. Serena, Coach is in charge of detentions this week, you better not be late to fifth period."

"Darien Shields," Serena began to hiss; then his fingers closed around her wrist. He breathed into her ear, "If you miss class again this week, the office is going to call your parents. You want to explain to your father why you've been skipping school?"

Goosebumps spread down Serena's neck at his breath against her neck. She pulled away from him, shuddering and unable to believe he'd just gotten so close to her after – after – everything.

"You better go, Serena," said Motoki worriedly, saving her from responding to Darien, who had released her and stepped back, a strange expression on his face. "You can't miss class again this week. Rini, I'll get ahold of Asanuma, okay?"

Serena heard Rini grunt and realized that she was still staring at Darien. She tore her eyes away, flushing, and scurried away with Rini.

L

Sailor Pluto rubbed the throbbing bump on her cheek. At her feet lay the being whose fist had given her the bruise: Jupiter's reincarnation. Pluto had been careless, assuming that the girl was asleep just because she lay on the sofa with her arm slung over her eyes.

Pluto propped her staff against the wall and crouched beside Jupiter's reincarnation. Her fingers brushed the bouncy, green-streaked curls away from the girl's face with a gentleness that she had not used on Mars' reincarnation. She had watched for nearly a year now Jupiter's fierce loyalty to Serena, from the way she always managed to bring a smile to her face to her snarls she directed at any threat, whether it was a talking cat or a planetary prince.

And all without knowing that Serena was actually the princess.

Pluto lifted Lita carefully back onto the sofa. Already the girl's forehead had begun to crease with the onset of her memory-saturated dreams, and static electricity had begun to crackle along her limbs, biting into Pluto.

The older Senshi retrieved her staff and set her gloved fingers to her junior's perspiring forehead.

Three hours later she rose from her crouch. Jupiter's blocks had been in a far more advanced state of erosion than Mars', with several errant memories that she had been forced to track down and disentangle from other, non-Silver Millennium memories where they had woven together like vines. If Jupiter's memory blocks had been in such a state, she shuddered to think of what had already penetrated Endymion's.

She pointed her staff at the face of the clock on the wall. A picture formed on the glass: a black-haired boy – no, a man – stepping into an elevator with narrowed golden eyes.

Pluto glanced down at Jupiter's reincarnation one last time, noting the disappearance of the green strands among her brown hair. Then she gripped her staff and vanished.

L

They were walking down the streets after school had ended when Serena cleared her throat and spoke.

"I'm going to see Lita."

Rini stopped. Was she insane? A Senshi not in control of her powers – "She's dangerous."

"She's not dangerous!" Serena walked ahead quickly. "She's _Lita._"

"Obviously she doesn't think so if she decided herself that it wasn't safe for her to be around you," retorted Rini. If this lady was such close friends with Sailor Moon, Jupiter, and Asanuma, then she should know what could happen when they couldn't control their powers! Of course, Rini thought ferociously, she was giving too much credit to a girl who used a gift from Sailor Moon as sloppily as Serena did!

"That's because she's scared."

"Fine, risk yourself if you want, but are you going to endanger my life?"

Serena turned stiffly. "I forgot. I'm sorry." She held her bag with both hands. "We'll go to the arcade and Motoki can keep an eye out for you until I get back. I won't be long."

They caught up to Motoki on the sidewalk to the arcade. He walked slowly, listlessly, as though he didn't actually have a destination. When he saw Serena and Rini, he lifted his head.

"You're going to see her?"

"Um – " Serena suddenly seemed abashed. "Yes. Do you want me to – "

"No." Motoki turned his head. "It would just make it worse."

"Well," began Serena hesitantly. "Could you watch Rini while I go?"

Motoki looked at Rini, an expression finally crossing his face – surprise. "You don't want to go to see her?"

Rini stiffened but said clearly, "It's not safe."

"Oh." Motoki's gaze fell away from her. "Okay." He looked at Serena. "Don't worry, I'll do my best to keep her safe…"

"Okay. Thank you so much, Toki!" Serena gave him a tight one-handed hug and dashed down the street.

"Well, let's go, then," said Motoki, beginning to walk a little faster. He looked at her, brightening slightly. "You feel like a milkshake?"

"No, thank you."

They didn't speak again until they had reached the arcade and Motoki had seated Rini at the counter while he tied his apron on.

"So," he said then, only a trifle awkwardly. He was reminded of the first time that he had talked to Darien, all slouched over, scowling, and basically screaming, 'Don't talk to me!' from ever pore of his body. "You've been having fun staying with Serena? She's fun, huh?"

Rini cast an incredulous look up at him. He felt a little jolt of surprise – Serena hadn't been fun?

"Well, maybe not as fun as Asanuma," he realized, remembering that Rini was Asanuma's cousin and used to his flamboyant brand of fun. "In a quieter way, maybe."

When Rini's expression still didn't change, he amended, "Although you caught us at an awkward time, she's not so cheerful lately with Lita and Darien and everything happening…" At this point Motoki realized he should just shut up.

"_Cheerful_?" Rini spoke at last. "A clown couldn't be more cheerful then her."

Motoki chuckled. "Ah, I know." He remembered that he should probably be offering Rini a lollipop or something by now; with her personality and vocabulary, it was hard to remember that she was a kindergartener and not a fellow teenager, especially in her transformed state. Then he remembered something. "Hey, I totally forgot! I talked to Asanuma yesterday."

Rini's eyes shot up from beneath her bangs. Motoki remembered, then, that he had been so shocked by what Asanuma had told him about their powers that he had forgotten to ask him about Rini – to even inform him of her arrival, in fact.

"Uh…he can't wait to get home and see you." Motoki lied against his better judgment, wincing internally. Quickly, he changed the subject as he saw a dark head approaching – "Hey, Buji, is that pinball machine giving you problems?"

"It keeps eating my quarters," complained Buji, climbing onto a stool next to Rini and digging his elbows into the counter.

"I'll fix it." Motoki hurried out from behind the counter to the game.

Rini watched him go, then glanced from the corner of her eye at the curly-haired boy still sitting beside her. He was staring at her. No, glaring.

"Why are you wearing your hair like that?" he demanded.

Rini glowered; she'd known this hairstyle of Serena's would get her into trouble. She yanked the buns out, ignoring the stab of pain from pulled hair, and stuffed the pins into her pocket.

"Who are you?" asked the boy now.

"None of your beeswax," said Rini, annoyed. Had Serena even made enemies among the grade-school population?

"There you go, Buji, it's fixed now." Motoki walked back toward them, brushing his hands on his apron. "Let me get you some tokens – "

CRASH!

Rini must have blacked out, for the next thing she knew she was sitting up and feeling sharp glass cut her hands as she pushed herself up. Cackling filled her ears; she looked up to see the inside of the arcade looked like a disaster zone. It was just what the house had looked like, that day she came home from school…

She sucked in a breath, banishing the memory. In the weak sunlight that spilled in through the shattered windows, she saw bodies glowing faintly with a blue, glittery nimbus. She followed the threads of blue light to a crouched, spider-shaped youma perched atop one of the video game consoles. It cackled quietly to itself; its attention was focused on something in the corner.

Following its gaze, Rini's eyes widened. The fourth Black Moon sister, Prisma, stood holding Motoki off the ground by a grip on his neck. He wore armor and familiar metal elbow guards that sparked as Prisma's black electricity crackled up and down his body, mixing with the faint blue glow as the spider youma drained his energy.

"Knew I'd find you here," Prisma was saying. "Where's your masculine boyfriend, hmm? She owes me a dry-cleaning bill." Motoki choked as she tightened her grip. "Guess I'll just charge her by killing _you_…"

Where was Sailor Jupiter? Or Sailor Moon? Rini's eyes darted around desperately, past the curly-haired kid whose energy was darker blue in the shadows where he lay behind an overturned table and the wavy-red-haired girl with the red bow in her hair, toward the booths along the wall, but none of the people slumped over in them was anyone she recognized.

Suddenly she gasped. She felt as though a cold hand had suddenly grabbed her ankle – looking down at her feet, she saw nothing there, but then her eyes caught a glitter of white at her chest. Gazing down at it, she saw a thin white thread of energy extending from her chest all the way across the room to the spider-youma.

In horror she watched as the youma noticed it, too. "Mistress!" it gargled. "Mistress!"

"WHAT?" snapped Prisma, whirling with Motoki still in her grasp.

"The energy!" And the youma used one of its eight legs to point at the white thread that had joined the spool of glittering blue energy entering its abdomen. "White!"

"White…" Prisma's eyes narrowed in delight; she flung Motoki across the room as though he was a shirt she had deemed too hideous too wear. He slumped down the wall, unconscious.

Prisma turned, following the thread's path. "Oh, little priiiiinceeeess, daaaaaarling, where aaaaaare youuuu?"

Rini scooted backward on her bottom, toward the counter, clawing at the thread emerging from her chest, but her hand passed through it as if it was not even there. Terror filled her as Prisma's footsteps clicked closer, where was Asanuma, why had he sent her to this place, why did they follow her –

The clicking stopped. Rini opened her eyes. Prisma grinned down at her, lipstick black around her white teeth.

"Hello, Your Highness," she said.

L

Guilt weighed Serena a little bit heavier with every step that she took. Memories of Rini's scared face, her wide eyes, her exclaimed "Asanuma!" pelted her like pebbles, piling up in the bottom of the well until they buried any other thoughts.

By the time that she was halfway to Lita's apartment, guilt had swallowed her entirely. She thought of how she would have felt if she had been Rini, and how she would feel – scared and alone. And she WAS being selfish and irresponsible, risking Rini by going to see Lita. Motoki was not much defense in a fight; he'd shown that much…

Serena turned around. And just then, a youma presence flared in her mind.

She turned tail and _ran_.

L

Sailor Moon could have taken out the youma. She could have survived against the strong green-haired woman who, grinning with bared teeth, introduced herself as Prisma.

What she could not do was take on both the youma and Prisma at the same time.

The youma spin her in so much tough, sticky webbing that Moon could barely move her legs, as though she was wearing a skin-tight prom dress without the slit. She was only able to keep use of her arms by slicing strands with her sword before they gripped her upper body in a mental asylum jacket.

Yet that defense was steadily failing, especially as Prisma chuckled and directed bolts of lightning that she had to dodge along with the webbing. Sailor Moon had never received the full brunt of Lita's attacks – not even her weaker ones – and Prisma was not skimping on the power. Each bolt drove into her like a jackhammer, sledging the life out of her gasp by gasp. Even Miss Lanai's projectiles had never had this much sheer power driven into them.

Where were Lita and Darien? Lita couldn't sense youma like Serena could, but Darien could sense them ever more clearly than Serena could – Moon ducked another bolt and went sprawling to the floor as her precarious footing caught on an overturned table.

Her face cracked into the heavy metal stand of the table. She lay for a moment, dazed, feeling warm pulpy gushiness where two of her teeth had been knocked out and an equally warm stream of blood coursing from her nose.

She blinked several times. Now that she was prone, she became aware of several other pains across her body. The whole top half of her body burned, as though she were a snake trapped in a skin that was too small for its body and her flesh was stretching and tearing under the pressure. Her legs had also begun to tingle unpleasantly where the webbing touched her bare skin. _Acid_, she thought tiredly.

She found her tiara beside her hand and struggled to warp it back into a sword. The metal had just lengthened when another set of webbing strands whipped out and wrapped around her arm and the sword, immobilizing it in front of her. Moon stared at it in mute horror.

Prisma approached, laughing. In her hands, she held a fiercely smoking ball of black lightning that hissed like an uncoiling snake. "Say goodbye, little Senshi."

The snake of electricity inched closer to Sailor Moon. Moon's sword was imprisoned in the webbing, unable to stab or parry. Moon's eyes widened, nearly crossing as she watched the crackling snake come nearer, nearer –

She snapped her eyes up to Prisma's and rasped, "Moon Twilight Flash!"

White light shot from the tip of the tiara sword. It slammed into Prisma in a wall of light. The electricity in her hands exhaled in a deafening blare of static. Smoke whooshed everywhere, cloaking both warriors.

Eventually the smoke cleared. Prisma was revealed, out cold and draped over a table in the opposite end of the arcade like a discarded piece of clothing. Sailor Moon lay crumpled where she had been, her whole front burned grotesquely. Slits of blue peeked out from beneath her eyelids, but they were still – she was either dead or unconscious.

Rini's determinedly-chained fear tore free of its bonds. Terror galloped through her veins like a stampede of horses. Sailor Moon was the only one who could protect her, the only one who wasn't cruel or insane or stupid – she was her only hope to ever get back to where she belonged –

Scrambling to her feet, skidding on the broken glass, nearly falling atop the curly-haired boy, she dropped beside Sailor Moon and shook her helplessly.

"Get up!" she half-commanded, half-begged.

She could have sworn she saw a spasm of movement in the Senshi's nearly-shut eyelids. Yet the tiara on her forehead was growing transparent. Rini's terror accelerated at the thought that perhaps Sailor Moon would disappear altogether. Leaving her all alone.

"Sailor Moon!" she cried again, tears thickening her voice. "Get up! You have to get up!" Her shaking of the Senshi's shoulders grew more violent. "You have to take care of me! I don't want to stay with Serena anymore!"

Now Sailor Moon's body really was flickering. Like a faulty lightbulb, her fuku wavered in and out of existence before Rini's eyes.

"Sailor Moon!" she screamed.

And then Sailor Moon's fuku flickered one more time… and a school uniform replaced her burnt fuku, and silver scars appeared on her slack, bloody face.

Rini stared in shock.

She lurched to her feet.

Sailor Moon was… _Serena_.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?"

The spider youma's voice cut through her shock. Rapid clicks filled the air; Rini spun to see it scuttling at full-tilt toward her. Her legs locked to the ground, and she stared at it in the same mute horror that she had pinned on Serena's body a second earlier. Now the youma was only a meter way –

Fire roared to life in front of her. A wave of heat baked Rini's eyeballs. She squeezed them shut.

Then she opened them to find a very familiar figure standing in front of her.

L


	17. Chapter 17

A/N: No sooner did Asanuma re-enter the story than everything seemed to right itself, like a snowglobe that had fallen on its side being returned to its full upright position.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon. God!

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Seventeen: A Long-Awaited Reunion

L

Beads of perspiration soaked Asanuma's body. He struggled to control the fire as his armor, slimy with sweat against his body, shifted around his limbs like an imprisoning exoskeleton. The fire snapped at its control like a rabid dog at a leash. He yanked at it, panting.

The youma, looking exactly like a giant spider with a woman's chest and face, screeched at him. Webbing spurted from its spinnerets and sizzled in the wall of fire before him. The flames spat the strands out as blackened bits of ash at Asanuma's booted feet.

He felt the fire barrier flickering. If he let it drop, he would have enough power to take on the youma, but dropping it would leave Serena and the brown-haired girl defenseless.

He gritted his teeth as the spider scuttled up a wall, forcing him to extend the wall of fire to block the new line of fire. Where was Darien? Or Lita? Was Serena alright? What should he do?

"Hey," he ground out, surprised by how much effort speaking took when he was using his powers like this. "Girl. Could you move – Serena out of the way – please?"

He heard the sounds of a dragging body, the squeak of the swinging door that led behind the counter.

When the squeaking ceased, Asanuma let the wall drop. The youma snatched its chance: a rain of spidersilk poured in on him. He clenched his fists, clenched his jaw –

fire burst from every pore in his body.

The flames incinerated the webbing; he stepped – as fast as he could, for her could only keep up this fire envelopment technique for five seconds – to drive himself into the youma.

He must have hit something vital, for a blue glittery aura exploded out and showered around him when he made impact. The youma was momentarily still; then it twitched, and, dragging two of its legs uselessly behind it, pulled itself toward the crumpled body at the other end of the arcade. Asanuma watched, too spent to move, as it reached the body and suddenly, both vanished into thin air.

"Asanuma!"

His eyes shot wide. He stumbled to his feet, turned to the source of the voice to se the brown-haired girl peeping up from behind the arcade. He frowned; she seemed familiar. And she knew his name. Who was she –

Then he remembered. "Serena!" he gasped, lurching to his feet and vaulting the stirring bodies and glass-strewn counter to grab Serena's battered, burned body.

A static shock snarled up his arm when he touched her, so strong that it snapped his jaw shut. Peering closer, he saw little sparks flying up here and there across her skin, which was already purpling with bruises beneath her school uniform. His friend's face was a portrait of gore, her hair plastered in the drying blood like grass in mud.

"Asanuma!"

Asanuma's head jerked up again. This time, he found Motoki looking at him, climbing unsteadily to his feet.

He barely noticed his friend's ninja-knight outfit; he held Serena out to Motoki like an offering, panic thrashing him like a storm does a ship. "Toki! What do we do?"

Motoki's eyes landed on Serena's prone body and blood-masked face. The color drained from his bruised face. "Where's Darien? He can heal – "

Asanuma didn't wait to hear more. He spun and kicked the employee back door open, Serena flapping in his grip. He had never traveled by rooftop before, but he did now, sailing over the streets, limbs trembling with adrenaline.

He crashed onto Darien's balcony. Dimly, he heard someone land behind him, shaking the railing.

The glass doors to the balcony were frosted over with cold. The heat from Asanuma's body, still piping hot from being wreathed in flame, melted it quickly. Asanuma glanced inside as she seized the door handle to wrench it open –

"Holy shit!" he hissed.

Inside the darkness of Darien's living room, he saw the silhouette of a woman swinging her staff into a crouched Darien. Who, for some reason, wasn't fighting back.

Asanuma crashed inside, nearly dislodging the door from its runner. "_Darien!_"

The female shadow spun. He caught a glimpse of glowing red eyes. He stared at her, feeling as though he was in slow motion…

Then she vanished, and he crashed forward onto the carpet.

Sound rushed into him. An shout from Darien, abrupt as if his voice had only begun to work in the middle of a shout. Then Motoki's alarmed voice from behind. Tense expletives from all three of them – and then a hand seized his shoulder and wrenched him backward.

"What HAPPENED?" Alarm, anger, and confusion wrestled in Darien's voice.

"Darien, who WAS that – " came Motoki's voice.

"What happened to her?" Darien had lifted Serena's body and now lay her on the couch. Asanuma stumbled after him to swipe pieces of shattered lamp from the cushions before they cut into Serena. He saw that Darien's living room was destroyed, but he spared it no more attention than that; his eyes flicked back and forth between Darien's tense face and Serena's bloody one.

"A youma," he answered, belatedly. "You can heal her? Can't you?"

"No," said Darien tersely.

Asanuma's stomach plummeted. He heard Motoki gasp behind him. "You can't – "

Darien's hand sifted Serena's matted hair. His eyes widened, revealing a rim of white around the gold, then closed. He went very still.

Asanuma stared, wondering what was going on, holding his breath, trying to claw past the emptiness that yawned suddenly all around him.

Then, as though electrocuted by the same surge of current, Darien and Serena's bodies both jolted violently. Darien's arm spasmed beneath her head, Serena's eyes flew open, a long, shuddering gasp tore up through her lips.

"…ri…" breathed Serena, eyes already falling shut again. Darien began to pull his hand back, but Serena's head lolled over and landed on it.

Asanuma stared at her. He saw that her hair was suddenly out of its buns and braided around her head. Her school uniform had somehow become her Senshi fuku. He was staring at Sailor Moon. "Is she – "

"Healing." Darien's voice was a rough blank. Asanuma looked at him and found his face a mask.

"I thought you said – "

"I can't heal her. But her Senshi form accelerates healing. She'll be fine."

Darien rose, pulling his hand gently out from under Serena's head. He stood for a second.

"Darien," began Motoki.

Darien held up a hand. "Quiet." He paused. "Rini?"

Asanuma whipped around so quickly the vertebrae in his neck popped and saw the brown-haired girl from before standing next to Motoki. His eyes bulged. "Motoki, you – "

"Where's Lita?" Darien's voice cut past Asanuma's accusing exclamation.

Motoki went pale. "You think that woman – "

"I'll be back," said Darien, and he strode to the balcony, leaping from the railing with a tuxedo materializing around him.

Motoki cried out and fumbled after him.

Leaving Asanuma alone in Darien's living room with a transformed, unconscious Serena and a complete stranger who'd just been witness to all of it – including, he realized as he felt the armor unpeel from his skin when he shifted – his weird superhero identity.

A thought occurred to him. He looked at her, noting again how vaguely familiar she seemed. "You must be a Senshi, huh?" He cast about for a planet. "…Sailor Saturn?"

She stared at him. Asanuma shifted uncomfortably under her regard, hiding his discomfort by looking back at Serena. He went to the kitchen and wet a dishtowel, then began to wipe the blood from Serena's face. He tried to avoid her scars, wiping the blood from between the silvery raised skin instead, but then he felt guilty and concentrated on gently removing the blood lodged in the rough scars.

But at last the silence grew too loud, and he looked up.

"Look," he said, grinning a little. "I know I'm devastatingly handsome, but it's rude to stare."

The girl recoiled – he hadn't gotten that violent a reaction from a girl since Rei, he reflected with a stab – then stared at him all the more intensely.

"You're Asanuma," she whispered.

"Uh…huh…" agreed Asanuma slowly, wondering what sort of things the gang had been telling her about him. And if she was a Senshi, why hadn't she transformed in the arcade –

He bolted up, placing himself in front of Serena. "Hang on," he said angrily, "Who the hell are you?"

At that a moment, a great weight shook the balcony. Asanuma's eyes snapped past the brown-haired girl to see Darien and Motoki supporting a drunken-looking Lita through the glass doors, an arm over each of their shoulders.

"What happened?" he demanded, not moving from his spot between Serena and the brown-haired teen.

"We don't know," said Motoki, at the same time that Darien said, "_Her_."

Then Lita croaked, "I feel like someone just beat my brains with an electric mixer."

Motoki led her to the loveseat and let go of her quickly, Asanuma noticed. "You didn't try to kill me on sight, though," Motoki said, but his voice too forced to achieve its intended levity.

"Whoah, kill on sight?" repeated Asanuma, looking around, but Lita's cloudy eyes had landed on Serena.

"Serena!" she gasped, lurching forward. Motoki caught her, brows lifted in surprise, and helped her closer to Serena's body on the sofa. Asanuma stepped a little aside for them, eyeing Darien, then the brown-haired teenager again.

"Uh," he said, "Who IS SHE?"

The sound of heads snapping around was like gunshots in the dead silent room. Asanuma took in Motoki's shocked expression, Darien's suddenly thunderous one.

"You don't know her?" he said in a low voice.

Asanuma darted a look at the silent, suddenly-even-paler-than-before girl who stood with her fists clenched at her sides. "Uhhh – "

"Of course he doesn't!" Motoki's voice, soaked with relief, broke in. "Serena's got her transformed, remember – "

"THAT's what it is," mumbled Lita, blinking and swaying a little.

Darien didn't relax. He strode forward, stepping very close to Serena. His hand disappeared around her hip. Asanuma's eyes bulged; then Darien's hand re-emerged, holding a chintzy pink pen.

"Serena said it only worked for her," said the brown-haired girl.

Darien didn't reply. He merely said, "Luna Pen, turn Rini back into her normal self."

Asanuma blinked at the flurry of glittery light before his eyes; then he was staring at a brown-haired kindergartener that was the spitting image of the teenager who had stood there a second before.

He blinked and looked at his friends. "I don't understand – "

"You don't recognize your cousin Rini, Asanuma?" asked Darien flatly.

Asanuma's eyebrows shot up. "Cousin? My parents are both only children – who IS she?"

"I didn't think so." Darien turned back toward Rini, stepping alongside Asanuma to stand before Serena. "She appeared last weekend with a youma in her wake and claimed that she was your cousin. She knows about your abilities – "

"And now yours," pointed out Asanuma, feeling sick. The girl wouldn't meet his gaze, it bothered him. He hadn't been bear a girl this young since his sister was alive – and she knew about his powers? How? Was this part of some plot to get to him?

Rini looked up. "I didn't think you'd remember be," she said in a resigned tone. "It's too early."

"Too early for what?" Asanuma saw anger flashing in the kid's eyes as she lifted her head. He remembered what he had heard just before he crashed into the battle – _"I don't want to stay with Serena anymore!"_

"…ri…"

The breathed syllable from behind them stilled everyone. Lita bent over Serena; Darien turned; Asanuma alone kept his eyes upon Rini. She stared at him, eyes snapping like embers, and then came Serena's rasp again, and her eyes snapped away.

"Ri…ni…"

Asanuma's eyes widened. He had never thought that Serena had been saying anything but Darien's name. But her blue eyes trembled open, and she looked blearily up at them with a vague emotion like anger stirring in their depths. "She…okay? Where…?"

The brown-haired girl stared at Serena as though she had never seen her before. Then she burst into tears.

And before Asanuma knew what had happened, Rini had somehow bypassed him and her face was buried in Serena's red bow, and the wan blonde had lifted a trembling hand to smooth the tangled brown hair.

L

By the time Rini cried herself to sleep, Serena had healed nearly to normal and moved up out of her horizontal position, the kid in her lap, glaring at Asanuma and Darien.

"Threatening a six year-old," she murmured, hair quivering with rage. "_Again_! She's a _kid_ – "

"A kid who lied about being Asanuma's cousin and now knows our secret identities," returned Darien, golden eyes flashing.

"Then how do you explain everything she knew about him? And us?"

"Obviously someone's been watching us and sent her in to discover even more – "

"Did she want to come with us?" Serena demanded. "Did she? No, we FORCED her – "

Asanuma looked at Motoki and Lita. "What in the hell are they talking about?"  
Lita opened her eyes to look at him, then frowned crabbily and cleared her throat. "SERENA! SHIELDS!"

Darien wheeled around. "WHAT?"

"Start from the beginning, you bastard," she said, closing her eyes again.

"While you do that – " Motoki jumped to his feet. "I'll make some food, huh? Any requests? Serena, what'll make you feel better?"

"Pancakes," said Serena defiantly, still glaring at Darien and, much to his consternation, Asanuma.

Motoki began to clatter in the kitchen, clearly preferring not to land in the middle of any fights that broke out. Asanuma looked at Darien and Serena.

"Okay," he said impatiently. "What happened?"

Serena swept Darien with another scathing glare, then launched into a narration of Rini falling on her head while she was at the park –

She had barely gotten out two sentences when Darien interrupted.

"What Serena neglects to mention is that someone attacked her before Rini showed up."

"WHAT?" exclaimed Lita and Asanuma together. Lita's blurriness cleared somewhat. "I didn't hear this part!"

"I didn't see them," said Serena, giving Darien a disgruntled look. "They were in the trees."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Lita demanded while Darien continued, "It was using wind, whatever it was. I've felt it a couple times since then."

"A youma?" said Lita, dropping her tirade abruptly. "One of those strong human ones?"

"Then why didn't it reveal itself? The only – vaguely – subtle youma we've ever come across was the one that gave people mental disorders." Darien shook his head. "And even then it couldn't resist showing up to make bad puns to our faces."

"_Anyway_," said Serena, smiling slightly at his remark, but clearly eager to change the subject. "The wind whatever-it-was left, and then Rini dropped out of a tree branch – "

"Not a tree branch," interrupted Darien again. "She came out of thin air. I felt it then, but after feeling that disturbance in the atmosphere I know what to recognize it as. And she's not human."

"Oh, and you are?" retorted Serena. Lita felt inclined to agree, despite that fact that she probably had no room to talk.

At Serena's words, though, the whole room had gone silent. They all looked around the room, not meeting each other's eyes.

"ARE we human?" asked Lita bluntly at last.

Darien looked uncertain.

"Is she a Senshi?" said Asanuma, changing the subject as he nodded toward Rini.

"Even if she was, how does that explain knowing so much about you?" pointed out Darien. He seemed very loath to consider that the child was not a threat. "And none of the other Senshi are that age."

"I wonder why that is," said Asanuma quietly, eyeing both Lita and Serena, but any more of his thoughts were cut off by what Serena blurted out next.

"Maybe she's the Moon Princess."

The silence that had existed in the room before was nothing compared to the deafening vacuum that filled it now. Serena's eyes went wide, she stared back at all of them, their shocked expressions mirrored in hers.

"I mean – I know she's too young, Darien, stop looking at me like that – "

"Then tell Asanuma to stop looking at me like I'm a pedophile," said Darien.

"You're blind, how do you know I'm looking at you like that?" demanded Asanuma, and a looseness descended upon the room, as though a noose had been loosened and allowed them to breathe.

Serena laughed shakily with the rest of them. "I was just thinking since you insist she's not human," she tried to explain herself. "And since she knows about us. It was just a thought."

Lita groaned. "Enough thinking. Let's just finish the story, please."

Quickly – or not so quickly, considering they interrupted each other every other sentence to correct some detail – Serena and Darien summarized the rest of the past few days, from Rini's running away to Asanuma's house; the youma's appearance; the atmospheric disturbance in the sky that had landed Darien in the hospital; and, with much grimacing from Lita, Lita's green hair and murderous intents.

"_You tried to kill Toki_?" Asanuma screeched.

Lita scowled, wincing. "I still want to kill _you_."

"Save the sweet nothings for later, Kino," said Darien, eliciting a squawk from Motoki in the kitchen. "Asanuma, you still have no clue how this kid can know all this stuff about you?"

Asanuma swelled with indignation. "I didn't TELL anyone, if that's what you're implying, _Your Highness_ – "

"You're all missing the point!" interrupted Serena (before Darien could snarl at Asanuma's appellation). "Those youma have been coming after HER!"

Lita nodded against the sofa cushion. "True enough. The talking ones, anyway."

"That doesn't change the fact that she's lied to us. She's endangering your life – "

Serena flared at Darien. "_I_ don't feel like my life's in danger– "

"And since you don't, someone has to look out for it," Darien snapped. His hand darted past Serena's protective arms and seized Rini's shoulder. "Wake up."

"_Darien Shields_ – " hissed Serena, but Rini had already flinched in her lap. Her eyes shot open; she pulled backward, out of Serena's hold, darting looks at all of them.

"What do you want?" she said hoarsely. Serena reached for her, and she flinched away.

"You've been lying to us," said Darien. "It's time for you to cough up some truth unless you'd rather get better acquainted with those youma."

"STOP." Serena's voice was a taut string that had been plucked. She stood up, the belligerence of her flashing eyes intensified by the Senshi fuku she still wore. She glared at Darien for a minute more before she turned to Rini and knelt in front of her. Asanuma saw her wince as the position pulled at the still-healing wound on her leg.

"Don't listen to him. We're going to protect you. I promise that I will not let a single one of them touch a hair on your head." Serena gripped Rini's hand. "Do you trust me to do that?"

Sailor Moon's golden head blocked Rini from Asanuma's sight; he could not see what she did in reply. But reply she must have, for Serena said something quiet, inaudible, in reply.

Then, more loudly, she said, "Protecting you will be much easier if you can tell us anything. You said you were being chased because of your parents. What did they do?"

Rini was shaking her head. "I can't tell you!" she said. Asanuma saw her eyes straying past Serena to Darien, fright clear in them.

Serena noticed, too; she glanced at Darien as though he could see her with a "See what you've done?" expression painted on her features.

"Asanuma, then," said Serena, turning back to Rini. "How do you know about him?"

Rini's eyes flicked up to Asanuma's, then away again. She stared at Serena. "He took care of me."

Asanuma frowned. "But I've never – "

Rini looked up again, this time at a patch of wall where the Transformers calendar that Asanuma has bought Darien last Christmas hung.

"You take care of me," she repeated, taking a deep breath. "In the future."

Darien's brows slanted upward. Lita's forehead furrowed. Even Motoki leaned around the kitchen counter, eyes wide.

"The future," repeated Asanuma.

The brown-haired child nodded, meeting his eyes again. "Of course it sounds insane," she said bitterly. "_I _wouldn't believe it if I were you."

"What year?" asked Motoki, taking a step into the living room. He leaned on the back of the sofa in which Lita sat.

Rini mumbled something, then looked up, peering around and cringing as though she expected a bolt of lightning to crash down upon her at any second.

"What?" said Asanuma.

Rini swallowed audibly. "2023."

Everyone's eyes widened as they did mental math in their heads. Except Serena –

"Darien, where's your calculator?" she asked, frowning down at her fingers.

"You'd be 32, Serena," answered Darien mechanically.

"It was a _joke_." Serena shook her head at them all. "I was trying to lighten the atmosphere – " Then she shrieked, "OH MY GOD! _THIRTY-TWO_? WE'RE _ANCIENT_!"

Even Motoki looked faintly nauseated. "I'll probably be _balding_…"

"I imagine you have proof?" said Darien to Rini.

Her eyes flicked to Asanuma. He stared at her, eyes dark and face unreadable.

"You…have a portrait of a girl," she began hesitantly. "She has black hair and purple eyes, it's in a red frame – "

Asanuma's face drained of color. He dropped heavily into the armchair. His face fell into his hand.

"She's for real," he told them through his fingers. He dug his fingers into his hair.

They looked back at Rini.

"Geeze," said Lita. "Who would be desperate enough to give their kid to Asanuma to raise? It's like selling them to the devil."

"Shut up," said Asanuma from behind his hand, but he lifted his head. He stared at Rini as though seeing her for the first time. "Wow. I'm…I'm sorry. I…" He didn't know what to say. '_I should have recognized you even though I haven't met you yet?'_

Rini stepped close to Serena. She did not seem to have noticed that she had clenched her fisted hand in a handful of Serena's skirt. "'S not your fault," she mumbled.

Serena gazed down at the little girl. Then she said abruptly, "How about those pancakes, Motoki?" She looked up at all of them with her dazzling Eager-Hungry-Serena-Smile, as Asanuma had dubbed it, upon her face. "We didn't eat lunch, and I'm starved! Aren't you, Rini? You like strawberry syrup, don't you, it's your favorite color – "

Rini's head jerked up. She looked at Serena disbelievingly. "Strawberry syrup is PINK."

"Yeah, your favorite color!" Serena grinned at her.

"It's NOT!" exclaimed Rini, stamping her foot. "I don't like pink!"

"Don't you?" teased Serena. And she reached into her pocket – frowning as she rooted around.

Darien cleared his throat. He leaned forward, handing something to Serena.

Serena's face lit up. She grabbed it. "Luna Pen, put Rini in pink!"

A flash of light, then Rini stood in a pink dress with pink hair – Asanuma started – and pink shoes. She looked down at herself and growled, then raced after Serena as the older girl darted away, shrieking with laughter, the Luna Pen held aloft.

Asanuma chuckled a little despite himself, rubbing a hand down his jaw. Motoki was smiling; Lita was falling asleep again; Darien was hunched over, shoulders tense. Serena's tactics hadn't distracted everyone.

Motoki brought in a steaming, leaning Tower of Pancakes in on a tray, blatantly ignoring Darien's long-established and only-ever-violated-by-Serena rule of no food outside the kitchen. "Let's get some food into you," he told Lita, who jerked back awake and focused on him. He directed his worried look at Darien. "What happened to her?"

"Hello," said Lita, albeit drowsily. "I'm sitting right here."

Darien snapped out of his reverie. "That woman did something to our minds," he said grimly. "Or tried, in my case. You've got a headache, Lita?"

"Killer," confirmed the brunette, eyes squeezing shut and lip curling.

"I sensed her coming," said Darien. "Then everything froze. She to me a little, I think, but then you lot showed up. Lita wasn't so lucky."

Lita mustered a smirk. "Better you the damsel in distress than me, Shields."

They were interrupted by a shriek. Apparently, Rini had wrested the Luna Pen from Serena.

"Go ahead and try!" laughed Serena's voice breathlessly. "It only works for me!"

"Does not. That guy used it before," retorted Rini's voice.

"That guy?" repeated Darien, brows aloft.

Asanuma, Motoki, and Lita grinned.

"Luna Pen! Change me back to normal!"

Lights flashed from out of the front hall. They looked behind he couch to see Rini in overalls and a blue shirt walking into the room.

Serena followed her, hair in disarray and face confused. "It didn't work when Rei tried it once…"

Lita had a response to that, but swallowed it, remembering Asanuma's face when Rini talked about the painting.

"Come sit down and eat, guys." Motoki handed out silverware. "Darien didn't have any syrup, but there was orange jam and sugar – "

Rini eyed the supplied condiments distrustfully. She hung back, looking at them all. "You're eating now?"

At the confused looks on their faces, she pressed, "_Now_? There's youma out there, and – "

"And we'll need energy when they come after us, won't we?" finished Serena. She smiled gently at the girl. "Sit down and eat, before Asanuma steal your pancakes. I speak from experience when I tell you he's not above stealing food from children."

"Hey!" protested Asanuma, but his grin was guilty. He lifted his hands. "After that punch Buji gave me, I vowed never to steal food from children ever again."

There was laughter, and then the friends sat down to eat together again for the first time in what felt like a millennium.

L

A/N: Do please review! Rini, Dare, Sere, Numa, Toki, Lita – what do you think of them? What did you like, what didn't you?


	18. Chapter 18

A/N: The responses to the last chapters were A-MAZING

A/N: The responses to the last chapters were A-MAZING. Thank you so much, everyone. I hope to live up to all your expectations, and you will all be pleased to know that – GASP! – the revelation of Serena's true previous incarnation has been plotted. Which means – IT IS COMING.

Just, you know, not yet. (wink)

In response to a couple reviewers: Who says that Pluto _wants_ Rini to exist? (waggle eyebrows)

To _renegade_, although I know I'm not supposed to respond in chapters – don't you dare change a single thing. I adore your reviews more than Cookie Dough Bites, and jade-eye will tell you that that's an adulation not easily surpassed.

A trillion thanks, as always, to jade-eye!

P.S. I apologize for the insane surfeit of dialogue present in this chapter. I am yet a novice and found no other way to convey the necessary information. Suggestions would be heartily welcomed.

JadeEye: Um I hope you guys enjoy the chapter but this will probably be the last post for at least 3 weeks. Eight and I are starting our IB exams and I don't think she'll have a lot of free time on her hands. Also STC 2 and the Fiore arc have been nominated for the UFO awards at . Vote!!

Disclaimer: Obviously, you can't own the things you love. You have to let them go, and if they love you back, they will return to you. Of course, there's no rules against tracking devices.

All that to say I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Eighteen: The Princess's Possessions

L

Serena was on her third stack of pancakes, and everyone else had finished, when Motoki started suddenly.

"Oh my God!" he gasped, jumping from up from Darien's black sofa. "The arcade! I forgot all about it!"

"Is it in bad shape?" Darien's brows rose beneath his overgrown bangs.

"I don't know." Green tinged Motoki's face. He glanced hesitantly at Lita. "I've…"

"Go," ordered Lita, who still had a full, untouched plate of pancakes in her lap. "Asanuma, go with him."

"No." Motoki shook his head and ran to the front door. "I'll have less to explain if it's just me."

"Detransform first!" Asanuma hollered just as Motoki grabbed the doorknob.

Motoki spun, his eyes wide and his armored arms akimbo at his sides. "How?" he asked wildly.

Asanuma lifted his own armored arm and displayed a dark, glassy stone in his fist. "Hold it. Then use your power on it like so – " He demonstrated, surrounding his hand in a ball of fire.

Motoki hastily imitated Asanuma. Electricity crackled up his arm, briefly lighting the stone within it like a lightbulb. Then he wore his torn apron and slacks again. He spun back to the door, and they heard him pounding down the hallway before the apartment door swung shut behind him.

Serena put her fork back down on her plate. Her expression made it clear that she had lost her appetite. "I think it's going to be worse than last time."

"The arcade?" Asanuma snagged her fork and stole a mouthful of pancakes from her plate. "Pretty much. It looked almost as bad as Darien's car did after Spring Fling."

Darien sat forward, elbows on his knees and face as tense as Serena's. "What happened?"

"I was going to check on Lita," began Serena, "so Motoki and Rini agreed to keep an eye on each other at the arcade while I was gone. Halfway to Lita's, though, I felt a youma at the arcade, and I turned around." She explained fighting the spider-youma and the green sister, Prisma. Then she looked at Rini. "But I don't know what happened before that."

Rini picked at her pancakes. "Motoki was fixing one of the games when the front of the arcade was blown in. I was knocked out, but when I woke up, I saw the youma sucking energy from everyone. Prisma, the green sister, was fighting Motoki. Then…" She hesitated again, then continued, "They noticed me. Prisma knocked Motoki out and came after me, and then…" She paused again. "_Sailor Moon _showed up."

"Ooh." Asanuma elbowed Serena. "You get italics and everything."

"And you still won't tell us why Prisma's so fixated on you?" said Darien, ignoring Asanuma.

Rini shook her head, not looking at him.

Serena cleared her throat. "I used Twilight Flash on Prisma, but I don't remember what happened afterward…" she trailed off.

"Prisma's attack went off, too," said Rini. "Then Asanuma came."

An acute silence seeped up through the break in the conversation, like mud oozing from between the bricks in a wet cobblestone street. Asanuma surreptitiously examined Rini. Having been, for whatever godforsaken reason, her guardian in the future, he felt obliged to offer that she stay with him. Such obligations aside, he really didn't know her (although she clearly knew him, if she knew about the portrait of Rei – the canvas for which he had only bought last week). Furthermore, his parents were scarcely home, yet not to such a degree that they would not notice a grade-schooler roaming the house and sitting down at their table. Plus, they were already so ticked at him for incurring Senator Hino's wrath that even if he did bring Rini home and beg, like a child with a stray dog ("I can keep it, Mommy, oh please, can't I? I'll feed it and everything myself!"), the chances of his parents taking leave of their senses long enough to say yes was in the negative percent.

And the crowning touch, of course – he had no CLUE what to do with a six year-old girl.

The subject of Asanuma's thoughts eyed him with equal unease. The reunion between Asanuma and herself had not been even vaguely close to any scenario that Rini had envisioned. This Asanuma was not her Asanuma. There were similarities, like the bouncy hair and jokes inserted to lighten the atmosphere, but the differences were more noticeable to her: this Asanuma was more impulsive in some areas than her Asanuma, and in other areas, he was slower, and he seemed sharper, like a splintery piece of wood.

Most significantly, however, he knew nothing. The Asanuma of this time had been her only – even if naively harbored – hope to return home, the only sign that would direct her to the path home. Instead, he was as clueless as Serena and _him_…

Rini swallowed a sigh against the lump swelling in her throat. Hollow weariness caved her insides. She felt like a marathon runner whom has finally reached the end of the course only to be told that the timer had not been started, and she would have to run the whole course over again.

"I want Rini to stay with me."

Rini's eyelids snapped open from where they had fallen shut. She looked up at Serena – Sailor Moon.

Asanuma cleared his throat. "Well. I…"

He trailed off and gazed intently at first Serena, then Rini herself. As his bright blue eyes bored into hers she was reminded of Sailor Moon's – _Serena's_ – eyes peeking out from her eyelids as she lay still on the arcade floor. Suddenly and uncomfortably, she wondered if Serena had actually been able to hear her crying that she didn't want to stay with her anymore.

"It's Rini's decision," Serena was saying to Asanuma and the others.

But surely she hadn't heard her. If she had, she would not be making this offer now. And staying with Lita was out of the question, as was staying with _him_. And as…well, _Serena-ish_ as Serena was, Sailor Moon was still a more powerful protector than Asanuma as he was now. Even if it seemed that she must have died sometime in the twenty years between now and when Rini was born…

Rini stepped close to Serena's side. She wished that the sudden tightness of her insides would loosen.

"I'll go with Serena," she said.

Serena just managed to keep her brows from shooting up as she looked down at Rini. Rini was not looking at her, however; her face was toward the ground, and Serena was met with only the top of her brown head. She wanted to squeeze the little girl's hand reassuringly, but…

"_Sailor Moon! You have to get up! You have to take care of me! I don't want to stay with Serena anymore!"_

_…_she had the feeling Rini didn't want her to.

Serena looked away from Rini's head, to the rest of her friends. "My parents have bought the story of Rini being Asanuma's surprise visitor for this long, but once they see you're back, Numa…"

Asanuma bit his lip helplessly, glancing at Lita for any input.

But Serena's eyes went to Darien. He sat with his elbows on his knees, his shoulders jutting forward like cliffs. She could remember, as if from a past life, the way in which his voice had hypnotized the guests at her surprise birthday party.

As though he had sensed the direction of her thoughts, he lifted his head from where it hung over his hands.

"I can make them believe something else," he said quietly and reluctantly. "If that's what you're sure you want."

"It wouldn't hurt them." Her words were a question masquerading with the bravado of a statement.

"It shouldn't," Darien said, still quietly. "But…you saw the storm."

"What?" Asanuma broke in. "Darien can use Jedi mind-tricks now?"

Serena ignored him. "You've done it before." Her voice was buoyant with firm confidence.

Together they all stood.

"I'll escort Lita home," said Asanuma.

"I don't need an escort," said Lita, but everyone ignored her.

"What if that lady comes back?" Serena looked from Lita to Darien.

"Whatever she did with me, she managed it," said Lita, touching her tender temple with a hiss.

"She won't get me," said Darien, answering the other half of Serena's question. "I'll go to Elysion."

Serena felt Rini stiffen beside her. She glanced swiftly around, ready for a youma to creep forward from the shadows beyond the streetlamps. "Did you see something?"

Rini shook her head. She demanded then, "What if she comes for you?"

They all stiffened then, save Serena.

"I'm sure she won't," said the blonde placatingly. "Let's go now, okay?"

"Serena," began Lita. Then Darien shook his head at her, and she subsided. Along with Asanuma, she peeled away from the group and headed east, while Darien, Rini, and Serena headed to the Tsukino residence.

When they got there, Darien held out an arm.

He faced Serena. "You're sure about this?"

Serena had already been nodding already in response to his question, her hands tightly clasped and her eyes distant, but now she stopped bobbing on the balls of her feet and looked at him.

She had worried only about violating her family's minds, but she saw now the tight expression that twisted Darien's features. He was nauseated by the concept of deliberately manipulating other people's thoughts.

Her mouth opened, she rocked forward to touch his arm – then she looked down at Rini. "I…"

The little girl was avoiding her eyes, looking at the sidewalk. Again, the memory of the hopelessly lost, abandoned desperation that had soaked her voice as she begged Sailor Moon not to die filled Serena's mind.

"I'm sure," she said resolutely, turning back to Darien. She added, steadily, "As long as you are."

Darien did not answer; instead, he strode forward. Serena nudged Rini after him and followed them both, closing the gate behind them. The click as it shut seemed unusually loud to her.

"Serena!" Ikuko greeted from the sofa as Serena pushed open the front door. "You're home! And Rini – " Then her eyes widened as she was half-rising from the couch. "Why, Darien! How are you? Your hair's gotten a bit long, dear."

Serena peeked at him just in time to see a rusty smile creak to life in his jaw. "Not as long as Serena's, Tsukino-san."

"Ikuko, is Serena finally home – ?" Kenji poked his head in the doorway. His brows jerked up. He strode quickly into the family room, Sammy following him curiously with a bowl of popcorn in his hands. "Darien Shields."

"Tsukino-san," said Darien cordially, bowing slightly. "Forgive me for intruding."

Kenji glanced past him at Serena. "I thought you were at Lita's?" he said reprovingly.

Serena's face fell. "I was, Daddy – "

Kenji turned his attention briskly back to Darien. "And to what do we owe the pleasure, Darien?"

"Now, Kenji," began Ikuko soothingly.

Serena glanced up at Darien helplessly, wondering if there was something he needed her to do before he could do whatever it was he was about to do. But he wasn't looking at her.

"May I sit down?" he asked.

"Of course," said Ikuko before Kenji, who was beginning to imitate a tomato, could say anything. She pushed her husband down onto the loveseat next to Sammy, who was cramming popcorn into his mouth by the handful and watching them all as intently as a Digimon marathon. "Rini, sweetheart, why don't you go upstairs and take a bath, you look like Serena's dragged you through a battlefield – "

"Actually, Tsukino-san," said Darien. "Rini is the reason that I wished to speak with you both."

As Serena listened, perched gingerly on the sofa cushion next to Darien, she heard his voice decelerating, melting like butter. She began to feel fuzzy, as though she was a breath away from falling asleep. Then, in that same vagueness, she felt familiarly calloused fingers pressing gently over her ears, and the vagueness vanished. She sat, quite still, back ramrod straight, and felt the vibration of Darien's voice through his fingers as he hypnotized her family.

All too soon, he released her. She leaned away from him to examine her family, who sat on the sofa with their eyes fastened to Rini.

Sammy broke the silence first, his teasing grin upon his face.

"Are you sure you're our cousin and not our little sister, Rini? You look like Serena with your hair in those dumplings!"

Rini shot a look at Serena and Darien.

"Sammy, don't make fun of your cousin!" Ikuko scolded, standing up and bustling over to Rini to march her up the stairs. "You must be tired from your trip here, sweetheart, let's get you into bed now so you'll be ready to register at your new school tomorrow…"

Serena nudged Darien's arm questioningly. He covered her ears again and said something that she could feel through his chest this time, standing as close to it as she was, and then he was guiding her out onto the front porch.

"What was that for?" she asked him when the door shut behind them.

"I had to trick your father into letting me talk to you out here" was Darien's reply. "I told them Rini's your cousin and she's moving in with the family."

"For how long?"

"I left it open. I think – " And here hesitance tinted his words, " – that they just won't think about that. It will be very vague to them. Like trying to recall a dream."

"So we're letting her go to school on her own?"

"She'd stand out otherwise," Darien pointed out.

"Yes, but the youma…"

"They wouldn't expect us to enroll her in school," Darien said. "And think how much trouble she'd get into on her own moping at home. We can't miss school to watch her."

Serena bit her lip. "You're right, I guess." She pushed her worry away and saw a sudden opportunity. "For the first time in your life. How does it feel, Mr. Shields?"

Darien rolled his eyes. "Your insulting skills have clearly withered from disuse."

But a smile quirked one corner of his lips.

L

"So are they back together?"

Lita didn't need Asanuma to specify who 'they' were. She shifted her shoulders as though shrugging off an itchy jacket. "Not quite." She paused. "I don't think." Then she sighed and shrugged again. "Who knows?"

"Wow, real informative." Asanuma rolled his eyes, but it was halfheartedly. He blew out a sigh. "I still don't know why they even split up."

"The prophecy," answered Lita simply. God, her head still ached.

Asanuma looked at her. She couldn't remember if he didn't know all of the prophecy – or did he know about it all? She couldn't recall… she headed off any of his questions with one of her own. "When did he own up about liking her?"

"Own up?" Asanuma snorted. "Darien doesn't 'own up.' "

Lita found herself intrigued although she had intended the topic as a distraction. Motoki had always treated it as a given that Darien was in love with Serena, and she had assumed that the black-haired boy had actually confided this sentiment to his friends.

"So he never actually admitted that he liked her, then?"

"Of course he never admitted it." Asanuma shook his head; his curly hair flopped out of his eyes. "But you knew that HE knew exactly what he'd lost after he went and lost it. That day in the arcade – you remember?"

Oh, Lita remembered alright.

"He'd been very happy up to that day," said Asanuma. "He knew it for a long time before then, I think. But people don't trust emotions they feel when they're happy. We'll fall hook, line, and sinker for anything we feel when we're sad or angry, but people – especially Darien – don't trust positive emotions. He _knew_, but he didn't trust it. But after they stopped talking – " Asanuma nodded sagely – "he knew."

"It was the opposite for Serena," said Lita. "She didn't realize when they were together and happy, but after they stopped talking…she knew." There had been a look on Serena's face that Lita had seen sometimes, a lower octave in her voice when she referred, however obliquely, to Darien.

Silence.

"But they're talking again now," said Asanuma abruptly, confidently. He looked at Lita and flashed her a bright, warmth-summoning grin that made her suddenly understand why Serena, Motoki, and Darien all called him their friend. "We're going to eat lunch together again now."

L

"I did sense something the other day," Haruka was saying as Rei padded down the stairs. "It was in the Myugen area – "

Rei stepped into the dining room.

Haruka looked up, falling quiet. She sat with her long legs propped up in another chair, a mug of coffee in her hand. Michiru, too, had one cupped in her hand, and she rose as Rei entered, going to the kitchen to fetch a cup of tea for Rei, too.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't our very own Sleeping Beauty finally awake," Haruka said, pushing out a chair with her bare feet for Rei to sit in. Rei pulled the chair far enough away that Haruka would not be able to lean her feet on it anymore, then sat. Her legs felt unsteady, as though they were jellyfish tentacles instead of proper limbs.

Michiru re-entered with a steaming mug. As she handed it to Rei, she scrutinized her, tracing the dark circles beneath Rei's eyes with a smooth finger. "How do you feel?"

Rei returned Michiru's gaze warily without pulling away. In fact, she had to keep herself from leaning into the cool touch. "Did you give me sleeping pills?"

"Nope, you managed the sleep of the dead all by yourself," answered Haruka. "What did you do, sneak off to drain our energy fighting youma without telling us?"

"No," said Rei. Although had she? She really couldn't remember anything…all she could remember was being so hot… hot as though her bones were melting inside her and leaving her formless, bodyless…

"Did you dream anything?" Haruka wanted to know.

"No," said Rei. She was too tired to hide the note of disbelief in her voice. She had not slept without dreams in so long…yet it had not even rejuvenated her enough to be able to appreciate the anomalous occurrence.

"Nothing at all?" asked Michiru, exchanging a look with Haruka.

Resentment spiked in Rei. She had expected no less from boorish Haruka, but for a moment – a split second – she had thought that Michiru was genuinely worried about her for her own sake. Not because Rei was the only method they possessed to identify the princess. That was the only value Rei held for anyone, in fact. As a tool. There was no reason for Rei Hino to exist as herself. She might as well give in, as Ami had, and be swallowed. She remembered what Sailor Mercury had told her.

_"We'll be seeing each other soon, Mars. It won't – it won't be long."_

Rei's skin broke out in goosepimples. She rose to her feet and staggered back up the stairs.

L

Serena had thought that Rini was asleep. She was proven wrong when, as she slid beneath her covers, a voice penetrated the darkness. "Why did you want me to come home with you?"

Serena's hand had shot to her SubSpace pocket; she pressed it now over her thudding heart and exhaled shakily. "You scared me!"

Rini obviously did not think this enough of an answer. Serena could see her pale face peeking from beneath her blanket now, pale as a sliver of moon in the dimness of the room. "You heard what I said at the arcade. Why did you want me to come?"

Serena snuggled her cheek into her pillow, gazing down over the edge of her mattress at Rini on the floor. "You said you wanted Sailor Moon to take care of you, didn't you?"

Rini pushed her blanket down. Now her face was a full moon staring up at Serena.  
"You're _really_ Sailor Moon." It wasn't a statement.

"You saw it yourself," Serena reminded her tiredly. Before, talking to Darien so familiarly had filled her with a gush of hope, but now it had ebbed and left in its wake a cold knowledge that a familiar friendship was all that their relationship would ever be. She wondered vaguely if this was what pregnancy would be like, with all these violent mood swings. Then she thought about how being pregnant meant being with someone who wasn't Darien, and her mood plummeted into hopeless depression again. She smushed her face into her pillow and mumbled at Rini, "If you want me to transform again, you'll have to wait until tomorrow. I'm too tired to prove it to you right now."

Rini did not reply, and Serena pushed her face deeper into her pillow.

"Aren't you mad at me?"

Serena pulled her face away from her pillow. She opened her eyes to squint down at Rini uncomprehendingly.

"I said I didn't want to stay with you," Rini clarified, not looking at her.

Serena sighed and propped her head in the crook of her arm. One of her braided ponytails slithered over the edge of the bed to land on top of Rini's blanket.

"Rini, you didn't like me, right?" she asked.

Rini had the grace to look abashed for a split second. Then she sat up, jutting her chin out. "I can't bother with _liking_ people right now. I need to find someone who'll keep me safe."

Serena nodded against her hand. "And you didn't trust me to do that, right?"

Rini's silence was answer enough.

"But you trusted Sailor Moon."

Rini hesitated, then nodded.

"And _I_'m Sailor Moon." Serena pulled her brooch out of her Subspace pocket. "So either you were wrong about Serena, or you were wrong about Sailor Moon."

"But you're not the _same_ person," persisted Rini.

This woke Serena up a bit. She pushed up on her elbows. "Of course we are. Just because my scars are gone and my hair's different when I transform doesn't mean…" She trailed off at the unconvinced expression on Rini's face. "Why do you think we're not the same person?"

Again, as she had done so many times, Rini hesitated. Then she said, "You saw what happened with Lita."

Serena sat all the way up, kicking off her blankets. "Yeah…?"

"That's what Sailor Jupiter is. That green-haired person who took over – _she's _Sailor Jupiter," said Rini. "Lita's just the person whose body Sailor Jupiter's soul took."

Serena felt very surreal, the way she had when she was a child and half-asleep as her mother read her fairy tales aloud as bedtime stories. She was just dreaming this conversation…wasn't she? "But that's never happened before," she said haltingly.

Rini shrugged. "I don't know why. But that's how it works." She eyed Serena, then lay back down on the floor, pulling the blanket up to her shoulders and giving her back to Serena.

"I don't dislike you," whispered Rini then, but Serena was too caught up in what the girl had just told her to hear the barely audible words.

L

"You mean we're not really reincarnations?" Lita stared at Serena, her face almost as pale as it had been the day before. "We're _possessed_?"

"Urgh." Asanuma shuddered. "That makes me feel so violated."

"I doubt _you're_ housing any reincarnations." Darien plucked a leaf from the tree beside them and touched it to his tongue. He frowned when he 'saw' how shaken both Serena and Lita appeared. "The generals were still alive when you were, and your idiotic behavior hasn't changed since they died."

"Wow, that makes me feel so much better," said Asanuma, swiping a hand across his forehead.

Darien returned his attention to Serena and Lita, the knotted stomachs of whom he could sense had not been soothed by his and Asanuma's little tableau. "Luna never said anything like that, did she?"

"Luna never told us _anything_." Serena chafed her arms mechanically: thinking of Luna, especially after Darien had told her about finding the cat's dead body that summer, always filled her with a nauseating cocktail of sadness and fright. "It was always, _'All you need to know is that you guard the moon princess with your life, and Tuxedo Mask is evil!'_ And if she had known it, she wouldn't have told us. Remember what happened when I asked her to explain what Zoicite said?"

Darien remembered.

Motoki spoke up. "Would Helios know?"

"Venus would have known," Lita said suddenly.

Darien, pondering Motoki's question, said with automatic sarcasm, "Yeah, too bad she's dead."

"Maybe she's not," said Serena, as abruptly as Lita had. "The Senshi were reincarnated to follow the princess so they could keep her safe. We follow her wherever she goes."

"Says who?" Darien was very still, meaning that he had focused all of his senses upon her. As she realized this, Serena started slightly. If he found out about Miss Lanai, then he would find out what she had done in the past, and then even their friendship would be ruined forever.

"Luna, I think," she said carefully. "That's why we're all in Japan. Or at least, we started out here, she said."

"So Luna did tell you _some _stuff," said Asanuma, prompting a nervous nod from Serena.

Darien ignored Asanuma. "And assuming that she wasn't lying to you, then that means…?"  
"Well." Serena shifted on her knees, looking around at all of them. "Venus hadn't been reincarnated like the other Senshi yet, so what if she was reincarnated when she died? Since the princess is still alive."

"_If _the princess is still alive," said Asanuma, who had been watching Darien.

Serena's reply was swift. "Of course she's still alive. If she wasn't, we wouldn't be here."

"What, if she died, we'd just keel over?" Lita wore a frown.

"Well – " Serena fumbled. "We follow her wherever she goes.

Darien sat forward suddenly. "_That_'s what it meant, Odango. Zoicite said you would go to hell. Luna said that the Senshi follow the princess wherever she goes."

"Hang on!" exclaimed Asanuma. "I never heard about the hell part – "

Darien ignored him. "Which means the princess has done something to deserve going to hell."

"What the fuck?" exploded Lita. "I'm not going to hell because of someone I don't even KNOW – "

"We knew her once – " Serena began.

"Not according to Rini we didn't!" Lita spat. "The PARASITES possessing our _bodies _did – "

"Enough."

It was the hypnotic tone again; Serena felt it thrum through her ribs. She looked to Darien and saw his eyes glowing ever so faintly.

Lita fell silent and still. Asanuma and Motoki were equally motionless. Serena looked away from them and back at Darien just in time to see his narrowed eyes dim back to their normal dull gold. Had he even noticed that he had just used his powers on them? Serena worried her bottom lip between her teeth, watching him.

"Instead of raging about something you don't know how to change," he said acidly "shut up and let me finish. You said right before Venus died, she was babbling something about the princess."

"Yeah…" Lita's voice was suspicious and irritated; then suddenly it morphed into an excited tone. "No, wait, you're right!"

"Obviously," said Darien coldly, but Lita ignored him.

"It didn't make sense then, she was blubbering all over, but she was talking about how stabbing her and trying to save her! She was saying that the princess killed herself!"

"Catholics believe that people who commit suicide go to hell," said Asanuma grimly.

"That would explain what Zoicite said." Darien's fingers formed a steeple in front of his mouth. He frowned into space.

"No, wait," said Serena hastily. "That doesn't make any sense. We don't know that Mina was saying all that, Lita said herself she could barely understand her. The princess didn't kill herself. The Dark Kingdom did."

"What makes you so sure?" Darien directed his eyes at her, and Serena felt a sudden gripping terror that he eyes would begin to glow and he would skim through her mind like the pages of a book. Then he would find out about Miss Lanai and their relationship in the Silver Millennium…

She swallowed and looked at her hands. "I just am, that's all."

"Well, women's tuition aside," said Darien. He spoke in a teasing tone to comfort her, but she did not notice it. He sighed and continued, "Suicide would explain a lot."

"But not why Venus would talk about stabbing her!" said Motoki. "Why would she say that?"

"Think about it, Motoki," Asanuma said before Darien could speak. "The princess uses some sharp object to stab _herself_. Venus knows that if it's suicide, the princess'll go to hell. Venus's job is to keep the princess safe at all costs, and surprise, surprise, Hell doesn't fit into those parameters. So Venus stabs the princess herself in order to change it from suicide to murder so that SHE could go to hell instead of the princess." Asanuma shrugged. "Alas, tricking the gods seldom works."

Lita, Motoki, and Serena's eyes were all as wide as dinner plates. And Lita was shaking her head.

"No," she said. "No. This is sick. This is like those cults that go and kill themselves just because their leader does –"

"If Darien and Serena are right, then Venus would be headed for hell anyways either way," said Asanuma. "By murdering the princess instead of it being suicide she saved not only the princess but also the other Senshi bound to her from going to hell. Wouldn't you do the same to save Serena?"

"I wouldn't have made that stupid bond in the first place!" snapped Lita. "So neither of us would have been in danger!"

"Well, apparently the Lita of the Silver Millennium did," said Asanuma silkily, ignoring Motoki's "Ix-nay on the ilver-say illennium-may!" expression. "So you'll have to find a way to deal with it."

"Easy for YOU to say, SHITtenou." Lita's fingertips had begun to crackle. "You're not the one going to hell because some princess ditz decided she couldn't bear to live without her precious prince – "

"Hold up," said Motoki worriedly, holding up his hands and glancing at Darien. "Who said that was why she did it – ?"

The sparks at Lita's fingertips fizzled. She blinked. "Well – didn't someone say that?"

"I didn't," said Asanuma and looked around at the others – resting a second longer on Darien than on the others. He cleared his throat. "A memory, maybe? Courtesy of Sailor Jupiter?"

"It would certainly explain why all the Senshi seem to hate me," said Darien with outward calm.

"No!" Serena shouted. Then, eyes wide, she tried to backpedal. "I mean – who would kill themselves over Darien? She would have to be really – stupid – "

A silence as painful as a broken bone descended.

Serena saw Darien's glowing eyes and realized with horror that she had accomplished neither in convincing them that the princess hadn't committed suicide nor in comforting Darien.

"Well," said Lita into the deathly stillness, seeking to make Serena smile. "If I ever thought I'd go to hell because of Darien Shields, I thought it would at least be because I got the pleasure of killing him myself."

Serena stumbled to her feet with a strangled noise. "I – class – " She managed and half-walked, half-ran out of the courtyard.

"And speaking of _stupid _people…" said Asanuma, glaring at Lita.

"Shut up," Lita snapped, trying to hide her own fury with herself. "She shouldn't even CARE. This princess is a BITCH!"

"Speaking of _bitches_…" said Asanuma.

"That's ENOUGH," Motoki growled at his friend as Lita lunged to punch Asanuma. He grabbed her around the waist, hauling her back.

"Furuhata and Kino!" A teacher spotted them from the hallway. "Not on school grounds! Detention, both of you! Get in here!"

"Thanks a LOT," Motoki told Asanuma, getting up. He and Lita stalked across the courtyard to the waiting teacher.

Asanuma watched them go and kneaded his forehead. He shouldn't have let himself have gotten so riled up. But the thought of Rei going to hell because of something that wasn't even her fault… He forced out a breath and turned.

"Looks like it's just you and me now, Darien…"

But Darien, too, was gone.

L

Lita caught up to Serena in the sophomore hallway a few minutes before lunch ended. "Hey." She caught the blonde gingerly by the elbow. "I'm really sorry."

"No, no, I'm sorry." Serena shook her head vigorously. "I need to stop spazzing out."

"You call that spazzing out?" joked Lita, trying to pull a smile from Serena. "I didn't see you trying to kill anyone."

The desired smile, although small, broke the stiff mask of Serena's face. The sight was enough to give Lita the confidence to ask the question that had been bothering her for the past half hour – perhaps even past week, since the green fog had first overtaken her mind.

She took a deep breath. "Serena, do you really think we're possessed?"

Serena looked up at her tall friend. Unconsciously she imitated Rini, searching her friend's face before she answered. Lita looked young, younger than Serena had ever seen her look, and more frightened than Serena had ever seen her. If only she could set her friend's fears at ease, if only Miss Lanai was here – she would know the answer the this question –

Serena's eyes snapped to Lita's again. She searched them and made a split-second decision.

"Lita," she said. "I have to tell you something."

And she did. Pulling Lita beneath a tree that stretched over the school fence to shade the road outside, quickly and tersely, she told her Miss Lanai's true identity. She told her that she would return soon and be able to tell them if Rini was right. She told her what Sailor Moon had actually been to the princess during the Silver Millennium. And she told her how Sailor Moon had betrayed her princess with Prince Endymion.

Lita's face had returned almost to the pallor of the day before by the time Serena finished. Serena's eyes roved her face uncertainly.

"Do you hate me?" she asked.

Lita stared at her. Then she shook her head to and fro like a dog shaking the water from its fur. "Why do you keep asking me that? If I hated you, your nose would be gushing blood right now."

Serena's face lurched into a bright, tight smile as though she was afraid to let too much happiness show lest it be taken away but couldn't contain it all.

"What I am is _mad_ as you!" Lita continued. "How long have you known all this?"

The bell rang, saving Serena from answering. The blonde bounded to her feet like a rabbit rocketing out of a hedge. "Don't tell Darien. Or any of them."

"Of course I won't tell Darien," said Lita scornfully. "What do you take me for? Get out of here before I really do give you a bloody nose."

Serena scampered off. Lita watched her go. The confident expression crumbled from her face like dried paint the moment Serena disappeared around a corner. She ground her elbows into her legs, staring hard at the grass. No wonder Serena's moods was acting like a haywire pendulum around Darien!

Uncertainty contaminated her sympathy, however. Why hadn't Serena told her? Lita was a Senshi, too, after all – had Serena thought that Lita would take the princess's side over hers? Lita's face darkened. This damn princess ruined everything…

And so did Endymion! He couldn't keep his hormones in check even then, could he? After what she'd seen between those two, she could picture as clear as crystal a crowned version of Darien stringing Serena's past incarnation along, encouraging her, looping her in – Serena had blamed it all on herself, but Lita knew better!

The late bell rang. Lita stood up, spitting in her palms and scrubbing the dirt and grass stains from her knees. Serena should not have felt afraid to tell her. And she would never have to be afraid to tell her anything ever again. Lita was not Rei or Luna or Shields. She was going to make it unmistakably clear where her _permanent_ loyalties lay.

L

Finally telling Lita about her true past had removed a colossal weight from Serena's chest. She felt as though she had been wearing a corset-tight bra for months on end and now had finally unclasped it. The removal improved her spirits so intensely, in fact, that when she bumped into Darien before seventh period, she impulsively grabbed his hand.

He turned to face her, his expression wary and as stiff as though she was an ax-murderer and not a below-average-height teenage girl. The rush of students gushing past them forced them both to the edge of the hallway, pushing them against the lockers and against each other like two logs afloat in a river.

"I wanted to say sorry for all that at lunch," Serena told him. "It came out really really REALLY wrong. I meant – what I meant was that if the princess had really loved you, she would have known that killing herself would have made you sadder than being without her would have."

After that heart-baring mouthful, she couldn't bring herself to look at his face, so she stared at his neck instead. When she saw his Adam's apple twitch and he didn't speak, her brain kicked into overdrive, and she realized that she had probably just stuffed her foot into her mouth again: she had just implied that the princess hadn't really loved him.

"DARN IT!" she wailed. "That's not how I meant it! I just meant that it's not your fault! And that I'm sorry I even talked at all, I should have kept my mouth shut, I overreacted – "

By now she couldn't bear to look at him at all; she was staring at the floor beside his shoes, her face red as the locker beside her. Then she heard the sound of him clearing his throat.

He said something, but it wasn't audible. She lifted her head to peek up at him.

He cleared his throat again. "Hell isn't really something to which one can overreact, I guess."

Her shame overwhelmed by puzzlement, she tilted her head questioningly to one side.

He had already begun to elaborate. "It's a big deal, I meant. So it isn't really possible for you to _over_react – never mind. I apologize too. I shouldn't have – I _should_ have – "

He gestured vaguely with his hands. The sight of them conjured, like a rose from thin air, an idea in Serena's mind.

"Let's make a deal," she said suddenly. "No more apologies. No matter what we do, we're not allowed to say sorry to each other. Okay?"

Darien lowered his hands. Then he lifted one again, cautiously. "So I can do…_this_ – " He grasped one of her hair streamers in his hand and tugged it.

" – and not say sorry," finished Serena, nodding. "And _I _can do THIS – "

She stomped on his foot.

They regarded each other for a moment, Serena watching him, Darien sensing her. They were as two statues for a moment.

Then Darien broke the spell. "I could have moved my foot, you know. I sensed that coming."

Serena lifted her eyebrows. "Oh, yeah? Sense _this_ – " She aimed at his left foot.

He stepped backward. She aimed for his right foot. He stepped back again. She aimed again, and he stepped back again, but this time his back collided with a wall. Serena, her head down as she followed his feet with predatory concentration, missed this fact and darted forward. Her forehead collided with his collarbone.

Darien caught her by the elbows before she could acquaint her face with the floor. "This is one of those situations where I don't apologize, right?"

"Right." She righted herself, straightening his tie and patting him on the shoulder. "Bye!"

She arrived at the art classroom a minute later, flushed, breathless, and late.

"Tsk, tsk," said the honey-haired substitute, glancing up from her desk. "Tardy, Serena."

"Sorry, Miss Kaioh," said Serena sheepishly, closing the door behind her. The disappointment of Miss Lanai not having returned to answer their questions could only slightly dim the lingering exhilaration of her encounter with Darien. "It was important."

"It was a boy," translated Miss Kaioh, eyes twinkling. "It wasn't so long ago that I was sixteen. What is he like?"

"It's not like that," said Serena, now studiously taking her sketchbook out of her backpack. Then, with equal concentration, she turned slowly to a fresh page. "We're just friends."

"Mm-hmm. Famous last words."

"Miss Kaioh!" protested Serena. "It's true. We've even already discussed why we don't work together. So there." She resisted the urge to stick out her tongue.

That did get Miss Kaioh's attention: her brows shot up. "Have you now? Well, that's… He likes someone else, I imagine?"

Serena tried to concentrate entirely on her drawing of the moon palace, which looked more like a hunchbacked cow asleep in a field for flowers than anything else. "Yes."

"Do you know her? This girl?"

Serena watched Miss Kaioh turn a page in her book, then returned her eyes to her sketchbook. She shrugged. "Not really. I've HEARD about her… but I haven't met her."

"Have any of your friends?"

Serena lifted her eyebrow as she looked up at the substitute teacher and grinned conspiratorially. "I never would have thought it of you, but you're a gossip, aren't you, Miss Kaioh?"

Miss Kaioh returned her grin. "Guilty as charged."

"Well, I technically don't approve of gossip myself," said Serena, giving up on the tranquilized cow and shutting her sketchbook. "But I heard that Miss Haruna's new boyfriend drives a Ferrari…"

L

"It's a shame that it's already too cold for short sleeves!" Ikuko's voice floated in through the living room.

Serena looked up from the English translations in front of her on the dining room table.

"Those summer uniforms looked darling on you – "

"You got Rini's uniforms?" Serena bounded to her feet and accosted her mother and Rini at the front door.

Ikuko blinked at her. "Well, aren't we energetic today? You ate that cherry pie I was saving in the fridge for tonight's dessert, didn't you?"

"Mooooom…"

Ikuko crossed her arms and tapped her foot.

Serena yielded. "I only had two pieces. There's plenty left for dessert."

Rini snorted and set her shopping bag down on the floor. "You're going to have to buy bigger uniforms for Serena if she keeps eating like a pig, Ikuko-san."

"At least I don't snort like one," retorted Serena automatically.

"Actually, new uniforms wouldn't hurt," said Ikuko thoughtfully. "You've nearly worn out your new long-sleeved shirts since you've been wearing them everyday…"

"Model your new uniform for me, Rini?" interrupted Serena brightly.

Rini picked up her bag again. "I'll wear it when I go to school tomorrow, when I'm supposed to wear it."

"You'll love Juuban Elementary, Rini," Ikuko said. "Sammy went there and just adored it. Now, it's time to cut some carrots for curry. Who's going to help me?"

Serena slunk toward the stairs.

"I will, Ikuko-san," said Rini.

Ikuko beamed. "Well, there we are. Why can't you act a little more like Rini, Serena?"

"Hey!" protested Serena, affronted. "I chopped potatoes last week!"

"Yes, after I dragged you out of your room by your ankles," said Ikuko complacently. "Next time I'll use that hair of yours. Sit down and help us out."

Serena plopped into a chair at the table next to Rini, grumbling. "Sammy doesn't have to help with dinner. This is women's suffrage."

Rini snorted – not her usual scornful one or her dismissive one, but one as though she had just contained herself from bursting into laughter. Serena eyed her a little suspiciously.

"Well, that's the way the world works, daughter of mine, so get used to it," said Ikuko. "Besides, I've found that among the few men who do cook, there are even fewer of them whose cooking is actually edible."

"Asanuma can cook," said Rini suddenly. Then, apparently realizing what she had just blurted out, she clammed up and glowered to prevent further questioning.

Ikuko did not notice. "Does he now, dear," she said and kept chopping meat. "Oh, Serena, I forgot, Mayuko-san called. She left a message, she wanted to know if you could pick up Buji for her tomorrow. I told her that I had a Red Cross meeting tomorrow afternoon and I needed you to pick up Rini after school, so I said she might call Lita."

Serena listened with half an ear, trying to get the dull peeler to work on the carrots; Rini had taken the good peeler. "I haven't talked to Mayuko-san in FOREVER," she said. "I have to go see her soon. How about we go to the mall this weekend, would you like that, Rini? I could buy you, um – "

She put down the peeler and regarded Rini intently. Rini eyed her back, opening her mouth –

"No, don't tell me!" Serena threw out her hand. She continued to scrutinize Rini for another minute. Then she wilted. "Books. You'd rather have a book than a Barbie, wouldn't you?"

Rini wrinkled her nose. "Who wouldn't?"

"There's nothing wrong with that," said Ikuko. "I've often wished my own children would read more than just the back of cereal boxes." She looked pointedly at Serena.

"Not me," declared Serena. "My children are going to spend every waking minute of daylight outside playing, and then in the evenings we'll play dolls and dress-up and video games and board games, and they won't read anything but comic books until they get to sixth grade."

"I guess they won't be very good at Scrabble, then," muttered Rini, evoking a laugh from Ikuko and a 'hmph!' from Serena.

"Laugh now," said the blonde. "You'll be so jealous of my kids that you'll be begging to come over and play!"

Whatever Rini retorted, Serena missed it as her neck prickled fiercely.

"Oh my gosh!" She jumped to her feet. "Mom, I totally left my math book in my locker, and we have 50 problems due tomorrow!"

"And how long have you known about these 50 problems being due, hmm?" said Ikuko, lifting a brow as she carved the meat. "Go ahead and get your book, then."

"I'll go with her." Rini slid out of her seat.

"No!" exclaimed Serena. "Those carrots won't peel themselves, you know! I'll be back in two shakes of a lamb's tail!"

"Shakes of a lamb's tail?" Ikuko asked of Rini, who shrugged. "Where _does _she get these things?"

L

It was another of the black, faceless youma sucking energy at a car dealer's. Sailor Moon arrived just in time to see Asanuma incinerating it in a burst of flame while Tuxedo Mask acted as a spectator atop a Hummer.

Asanuma looked up and spotted her as she landed on the neighboring black convertible. "You snooze, you lose!" he called, clearly high on a spurt of triumphant adrenaline.

"Whatever makes you feel better, amateur," returned Moon good-naturedly. She concentrated on the vicinity but no longer felt anything. "That was all?"

"So it seems." Mask stood as the handful of civilians lying in the parking lot began to stir. "Not a very strategic target. There's not even ten of tem."

"Well, car salesmen often SEEM to have ten times the energy of normal mortals." Asanuma joined them, grinning.

Mask made a noncommittal noise. "Where's Rini, Odango?"

"At home," said Moon. "I'm going back now."

"We'll come with you."

"Okay, but NO camping out in my tree tonight."

Mask did not dignify this with an answer.

They leapt back into Serena's neighborhood, Asanuma falling slightly behind as he paused to work up the nerve to cross the yawning gaps between several pairs of buildings.

"He's coming along fast," said Moon to Mask. "I remember it took me at least a month to finally jump that far."

"_I_ didn't have a choice," said Mask. "I did it that first night, to get to Molly's mom's store and rescue a blonde banshee."

Moon grinned. "You're welcome."

A mist of water sprayed her face. She blinked, sputtering, and glanced over at him just in time to see a smirk flitting from his face.

"You did that!" she accused him, shocked both by the sheer surprise of suddenly walking into a mini-cloud and by his casual use of his powers.

"Guilty as charged," he said, echoing Miss Kaioh's words from earlier that day.

Moon thought of his use of mind-manipulation earlier that day and wondered, again, if she should worry.

They landed, as usual, on the tree outside Serena's window. No sooner had Moon's feet touched the branch than the curtains of her window were yanked open by two small hands.

"Rini!" she exclaimed in a whisper. "You abandoned the carrots?"

"I finished," said Rini. "Aren't you going to come in through the front door so your mom sees you?"

"Oh, yeah." Sailor Moon turned back to Mask and Asanuma, who had just landed, panting and pink-faced. "Well, see you at school tomorrow."

"Let's go," said Mask to Asanuma.

"What?" yowled the sweaty blond. "But I just got here!"

"Rini?" floated up Ikuko's voice from the hallway through Serena's window. "Was that a cat?"

"Good job," Rini, Moon, and Mask told Asanuma in unison.

"No, Ikuko-san," Rini called back. "I think it was Serena. She was just coming up the sidewalk, but she tripped."

Mask flashed a sudden, bright smirk at Moon. "Already she's picked up on your clumsiness."

"Yeah, yeah," Sailor Moon grumbled, shimmying down the tree. "Now I have to scrape my knee to back up the story…"

She detransformed. Then she walked over to the cobblestone leading to the front path toward the house and grated her knee down it.

"Serena!" exclaimed Asanuma in a whisper, aghast.

Mask echoed his disapproval with a grunt.

"_Good night_, guys," said Serena pointedly, heading inside the house.

"Wait – " Rini let out a frustrated noise as the sound of Serena opening the door and calling, "Hi, mom!" reached their ears.

"She forgot what she said she was going to get, didn't she?" said Mask.

Rini eyed him balefully. "Her math book," she said at last, reluctantly.

"Ah," said Mask, and the conversation ended. They sat in the dusky silence, the only sound that of Asanuma's panting as he regained his breath.

"Are you going to go now?" said Rini when Asanuma's respiration had returned to normal.

Darien grunted noncommittally again.

"Serena feels guilty when you stay in the tree," said Rini and closed the curtains.

"She's got a pretty good read on Serena, huh?" Asanuma glanced over at Darien – who, it was obvious from his expression, had entered Brooding Mode. "Serena's really not helpless, you know, Darien. She'd pretty much made mincemeat of that Prisma chick when I showed up."

"Prisma was a youma. Whoever this other person is, she's exponentially more dangerous. She immobilized me without me even realizing it, Asanuma."

"So? Lita can do that, too."

"Not to me she can't." Darien shook his head. "I'm staying here until we figure out who that lady was and what to do."

"You don't think finding out the truth from Helios about the reincarnations wouldn't make Serena feel much better?"

Darien scowled again. The leaves on the trees around him rustled although there was no wind. "Fine. YOU stay here."

"Me?" yelped Asanuma. "No way! Serena's dad would kill me!"

"Then don't get caught." Darien's eyes lit golden, and he disappeared into thin air.

No sooner had he vanished than the curtains opened again. Serena leaned out the window. "Go home, Numa."

"But – "

"You just killed your first youma and jumped a mile of roofs. You're exhausted. I remember how that feels. Go home," commanded Serena. "I can take care of myself. YOU know that, at least."

Asanuma grinned at her. "Yeah. I do."

Still, he grumbled on his weary way home. "You'd think they were royalty the way they both order me around…" Then he remembered that Darien actually was royalty, and he scowled. "Hmph."

L

An eternity seemed to have passed since Darien had last come to Elysion. Opening his eyes and being able to _see_ was such a surprise that he actually took a step back.

"Helios," he called then, scanning the rolling valley of colorful flowers and looking for a white shape within them. "Helios!"

The gentle sound of beating feathers came from behind him. He turned and found the white-haired, white-skinned, golden-horned priest hovering above the ground a few feet away from him.

"Endymion-sama," Helios said cautiously.

Darien remembered now that the last time he had come to Elysion he had been in a spitting-angry mood at Serena's rejection of his kiss.

"Um," he said. "I was a little short with you the last time I was here. I apologize for that."

"His Highness does not need to apologize," said Helios, but he did not descend to the ground.

"Okay…" Darien ran a hand through his hair. "I have a question. Rini told us – "

Then he realized that Helios had no clue who Rini was. He sighed and launched into the story from the point of Rini's arrival.

"And she said that the Senshi's souls take over the bodies, as occurred when Lita tried to attack Motoki," Darien finished. "Do you know anything about it?"

Helios still hovered in the air, but he had floated a few inches closer during Darien's recounting. "I know nothing of what occurred after the last visit that Prince Endymion paid me before the fall of Silver Millennium. What the child says seems plausible…yet I would be more concerned about the child's identity. To enter the past, she would have had to pass the Senshi who guards the realm of time."

Darien's eyes narrowed. "And that would be?"

Helios was avoiding his eyes again. "Sailor Pluto," he responded slowly, almost reluctantly.

"Was she not killed during Metallia's attack?"

"I do not know, prince. Perhaps the only power more mysterious than that of Sailor Pluto is that of the Silver Crystal. She is said to control all events that occur in the galaxy."

"And would she have allowed a child into the past? Or would that…tangle the fabric of time?" Darien winced at the cheesiness of what he had just asked.

"I do not believe that Pluto would allow the child past, for it is her responsibility to prevent such trespassers," said Helios, apparently not noticing anything at all amiss with Darien's phrasing. "Even less do I believe that she would permit, or that she would fail to stop, an entire troupe of villains such as that you describe, to pass her. Thus it seems most likely that Pluto may not have survived Metallia's attack."

"Meaning that she's missing her memories like the rest of the Senshi and the time realm is left unguarded," concluded Darien. He stood. "Thanks, Helios. We should really resume our lessons. You have a lot of information to offer me."

Helios did not speak but only floated further away, watching Darien carefully.

Darien ignored his irritation. He needed to control his temper. "Goodbye, Helios." He closed his eyes and returned to Serena's tree.

Which he found empty.

"He left," said a voice near his ear.

"I imagine you made him?" Darien asked sourly.

"He's not your _slave_," retorted Serena. "And he's not _my _bodyguard. Neither are you. Go home."

"Is Rini sleeping?"

He heard Serena sigh and call, "Rini, are you sleeping?"

There was no answer.

"But that doesn't mean anything," Serena's voice informed him. "I thought she was sleeping last night, and she wasn't. Anyway, what did Helios say?"

"I thought you wanted me to leave?"

_Thbbbbb!_ Serena's lips made her answer.

He grinned despite himself. "Fine, your eloquent argument has persuaded me to stay and enlighten you. Helios didn't know anything. He said it could be _possible_."

"And?"

He knew he shouldn't do it, but the words came out of his mouth before he could stop them. "It's cold out here."

She sputtered. "Well, you're not coming in here!"

Suddenly he was perched atop the windowsill. Except –

"Darien, you're on my _hair_!"

"Oops," he heard himself say, and he hopped off – coincidentally into her room. The heat of her blush was like sunlight on his skin. "I don't apologize."

He heard her unwilling laugh. "No, really – you can't be in here. Rini needs her sleep, tomorrow's her first day of school."

"I'll be quiet," said the him inside him. And his heightened hearing heard her tiny intake of breath, like the heady sip of night air a moonflower takes when it closes its petals.

And then he sensed it, the change, like the sudden shift in light as the sun suddenly collapses beneath the horizon and shadow rushes into the vacuum to fill the spaces. Her hair the softest silk around him, entwining him like living rose vines, her fingers the same cold kisses on his face that he remembered them as she traced his face, her lilac eyes tracing the same contours, then white eyelashes shuddering shut as he bent to her, combing his fingers through her hair…

L

"Uh-oh," said Pluto's protégé.

Pluto glanced over, her eyes landing on the same time-window that had arrested the other Senshi's attention. She cursed.

"Shall you go or I?"

Pluto did not reply with words. She lifted her staff and disappeared from the Time Plane. The other Senshi watched as Pluto appeared in the time-window and applied the end of her staff to pressure points in both of the monarch's necks. Then she placed the princess in her bed, where her hair shimmered back to gold. Stepping over the child sleeping on the futon on the floor, Pluto then disappeared with the unconscious Endymion.

She appeared next to the other Senshi a moment later, eyes slitted.

"Well, we no longer need to dither over one of our questions," said the protégé Senshi, gesturing at the sleeping child in the time-window. "Rini's existence is no longer in question."

"There is a time for flippancy, and this is not it," Pluto snapped. She stalked like an imprisoned panther through the maze of time-windows that had multiplied exponentially since High Senshi, Endymion's daughter, and the Black Moon had torn through the proper flow of time. "This is exactly the scenario I wished to prevent!"

"Alas," lamented her companion. "Your attempt to barricade the prince's memories appears to have had the opposite effect and loosened them. In such close proximity to the presence, the emergence of his flash-form triggered the emergence of hers."

"Too early!" Pluto hissed. "That idiot Lanai! First she triggered the other Senshi's alarms, and then she made the princess vulnerable to this!"

"They were always vulnerable to this," refuted the other. "The Senshi's bonds were modeled after this one. The difference is that you can control the Senshi's, but you cannot control this one."

Pluto spun, her black hair billowing out like crow's wings. "Proximity triggered it, you said."

"So it appears. My Lady comprehends the inherent futility in attempting to distance soulmates, of course."

Pluto was no longer listening: she was now in Uranus and Neptune's abode. There she delivered her orders, ignoring their dumbfounded expressions.

Left behind in the time plane, Pluto's companion, Sailor Mercury, ignored the time window that showed Pluto with Haruka and Michiru. She turned instead to a window containing a pale, black-haired girl with burning eyes. And she smiled.

L

"You look relaxed," Lita noted of Serena the next day. "I take that to mean that Rini didn't put up a big fuss about going to school today, then?"

"No, we both went to bed pretty early." Serena took a bite of her cat-shaped onigiri. "She's too calm and collected to have the night-before-school jitters, I guess."

"Is it safe for her to be alone all day like that?" wondered Motoki aloud.

"From what she told us, the only way she was even found yesterday was because the youma was sucking energy and they noticed hers." Darien rubbed his hair, which he had woken up too late to brush that morning. Asanuma had been kind enough to point out to him that it looked as though he had just come from an early-morning make-out session. Darien had been kind enough to punch him in the kidneys.

"What, like her energy's different?" demanded Lita.

"Apparently." Darien gave up on his hair and opened his bottle of soda with a hiss. Serena absently rummaged in her bag, pulled out a glittery pink brush, scooted over on the grass, and began to brush his hair.

Darien jerked in shock. The soda bottle jumped out of his hands and disgorged its contents all over his legs.

Serena rocked back on her heels in guilty dismay. Lita and Asanuma exploded into laughter.

"The – look – on – your face!" gasped Asanuma.

Darien gave him another punch in the kidneys. As Asanuma writhed on the grass in pain, he turned and gave Serena a Look.

Serena licked her lips, her lungs suddenly tight. "Um…sorry?" she managed.

He leaned toward her. "You could have _warned _me."

At that very moment, a gust of rain slapped down upon them. Darien and Serena looked up as Lita made an exclamation of surprise.

"What the heck?" she said, shielding her eyes from the rain as students all over the courtyard hurried to their feet and scampered inside. "It wasn't even cloudy!"

"Well, come on, let's not wait to get soaked!" Asanuma pulled Serena to her feet with an arm, pushing her under the umbrella that Motoki had pulled out. "Darien, aren't you coming?"

Darien was frowning as he stood. "Go in, I'm going to check something."

"But," protested Serena.

Asanuma pushed her along with Motoki and Lita. "Go ahead, I'll stay and keep an eye on him. He's just being paranoid. I'll call Toki's cell if anything's weird."

The trio scurried inside as Asanuma yanked his jacket up over his head. "What's the deal, man?"

Darien had a hand against the tree's trunk, his face distant.

"Dare?"

"It's not raining anywhere else, is it?"

Asanuma looked around. Rain still fell, now a quiet sprinkle, in the courtyard, but the patch of road outside the fence that he could glimpse looked sunny and dry. "Not over the road, it doesn't look like."

"Huh," said Darien. He removed his hand from the tree.

"You think it was a youma?" Asanuma wanted to know.

"No," said Darien, not elaborating. Then the bell rang to go to class. Asanuma darted a last glance at Darien before he headed inside for Art with Miss Kaioh. His black-haired friend didn't look tense…just thoughtful.

L

With the arcade out of commission, the gang had neither part-time jobs nor a hang-out to go to. Ikuko had charged Serena with picking up Rini from her first day of school, and everyone else decided to tag along, then stop for ice cream at Serena's second-favorite café.

Motoki, who had his last class with Darien, showed up at the front gates alone, however. "Dare's gotta go pick up Buji from school," he explained. "Buji's mom called and asked him. He's gonna meet us afterward."

"What am I, chopped liver?" Lita grumbled. "I could have picked him up."

"Yes, and you'd be a much more fatherly presence than Darien, wouldn't you, Lita-chan?" Asanuma chortled, earning a Death Glare.

"Okay, guys, enough, let's get going." Serena began marching. "Somehow I don't think Rini's the type to appreciate fashionably late entrances."

When they reached the elementary school, however, they found that even if they had been late, they couldn't have made Rini much angrier than she already was.

"They're IDIOTS!" she fumed, stomping her feet in her brand-new saddle shoes. The marshmallow-shaped hat on her head toppled over to the ground and shrunk in the heat of her rage.

Serena quailed under the disapproving glances being shot her way by the parents all around her. She heard Asanuma stifling laughter.

"Um, Rini, how about we get out of here and then you can tell me about your day – "

The full force of Rini's blue glare was turned onto Serena.

Yet rather than increasing her discomfort, the glower calmed Serena, filling her with affectionate amusement. She had never seen Rini this worked up before, she realized, and it was rather endearing to see her throwing a temper tantrum – it showed her Rini really was a child under all that cynicism and elevated vocabulary after all.

"Look, everyone came to pick you up," said Serena calmly, as though she hadn't noticed how angry Rini was. She caught her hand and pulled her forward.

"Hey, kiddo!" Asanuma pushed away from the wall against which he had leaned. "Man, did you hear that sonic boom just now? It almost sounded like someone's _voice_ – "

"Ignore him, Rini." Lita placed a punch in Asanuma's pitiable kidneys and stepped forward over his twitching body to lean over Rini. "How was your day?"

"Can't you tell?" Rini's cheekbones were still dangerously jutted out, although the red had faded from her face considerably. "Serena, I DETEST this place."

By now, they were nearly a whole block down the street, out of the earshot of scandalized mothers. Serena was thankful. She understood Rini's distemper – she remembered several of her own first days of school, and it must be fifty billion times worse for Rini as a new student in the middle of the year, away from her parents, and thirty years out of her own time – but she worried a lot about what people thought. And the last thing that Rini needed was to draw attention; Serena had the feeling the youma would find her soon enough without her helping them.

"What do you dislike about it?" she asked Rini soothingly.

"_Detest_," corrected Rini. "Everything! They put me in kindergarten, and all they do is play house and glue paper and plant lima beans!"

"Well, I'm sure we can get Mom to have the school move you up," said Serena. "What grade were you in at home?"

Rini faltered. "The grades aren't the same here. But I can _read!_ I'm not _stupid_! And I WON'T eat glue!"

"Why the hell would you eat glue?" Lita knitted her eyebrows, not noticing Serena's reproachful expression at her language.

"No, wait, I know what this is." Asanuma held up his hands. "Rini, did a second-grader tell you that kindergartners have to eat glue?"

Rini crossed her arms over the red bow of her uniform shirt and stared him down, her cheekbones at their juttiest. "_No_."

"He did." Asanuma nodded at her. "I can tell."

"Fine." Rini narrowed her eyes, not changing her stance. "Maybe."

"Thought so." Asanuma straightened. "That's just something the big kids tell little kids, Rini-chan. You don't have to eat glue – unless you want to."

"Who told you that whopper anyway?" asked Lita. "Want me to beat him up for you?"

"No, I'll save that pleasure for myself, thanks," said Rini grimly, gripping the straps of her backpack and stalking along at Serena's side like a panther on the prowl.

"Glad there weren't any kids like that around when I was a first-grader telling the kindergartners they had to eat the earthworms in the terrarium," Asanuma muttered to Motoki.

They reached the café that was a few blocks from the park and commandeered a huge booth in the back. Rini hovered at the end of the table as they all jostled for the best seat (Asanuma always played dirty with his elbows) until Serena pulled her in on her side.

"Stop, you guys, you're embarrassing Rini!" said Asanuma loudly.

"Says the one howling like a hyena," said Motoki indignantly. "I think your elbow made a hole between my ribs."

"Anyways." Lita cleared her throat. "What'll it be, guys? A late lunch?"

"Wow, that sounded just like me!" Motoki grinned at her, his argument with Asanuma forgotten. Until –

"Wow, that sounded just like a gay man!" imitated Asanuma with an evil grin.

"Ahem! Ears!" Serena jerked her head toward Rini.

Rini rolled her eyes. "Please, don't refrain from your crude humor for my sake."

Motoki and Asanuma both stared. In unison, their heads swung toward Serena. "She sounded just like Darien."

"Hello?" said Rini. "I'm right here? Can we start pretending I actually understand what you're saying?"

The two boys looked back at her and then at Serena again. "JUST like Darien," they said simultaneously.

"Hmm," said Asanuma. "I know we've always joked about Buji being your guys' son, but this one's even _more_ of a candidate – OH MY GOD!"

"Did some unworthy baka just say my name?" From out of nowhere, Bujiro Iwara suddenly climbed up into the seat that a writhing Asanuma ("MY SHIN! MY SHIN!") has just vacated. He wore a bandage on one cheek: his only injury, Serena was grateful to see, from the attack at the arcade. "Onee-chan – "

He cut off in mid-sentence. Rini had just climbed into Serena's lap. His brows knit, digging into his eyes. The high schoolers watched Rini return the glare with an equally challenging glower.

"YOU!" Buji shouted, stabbing the air in front of Rini with an accusing finger. "Who ARE you?"

Rini glared harder and didn't answer. She also knotted her arms around Serena's neck.

Buji frowned harder. "Don't ignore me, glue-eater!"

Everyone's jaws dropped. BUJI was the whopper-telling bully?

"Are you my boss?" said Rini in a scathing tone. "I don't think so."

"Serena's my onee-chan." There was the slightest emphasis on 'my.'

"She's _my_ cousin." The emphasis on "my" was not at all slight.

"Nuh-uh!"

Rini jutted her chin out. "How juvenile."

Buji stuck out his tongue. "Ttthhhbbbbb!"

Rini's eyes flared. "THHHBBBBBBBBBBB!"

Buji blinked the saliva from his eyes. "You spit on me!"

"Hey, hey, why don't we calm down?" Motoki waved his hands, trying to break it up. Buji's face was very red now, and the two little faces were rather close together.

"Darien!" Asanuma's voice could suddenly be heard exclaiming. Serena looked over Rini's brown hair buns to see an annoyed-looking Darien making his way carefully through the maze of tables. "You missed it! Buji and Rini were just fighting like you and Serena used to!"

Buji spun. "Darien-baka!" He pointed a finger at Rini, forgetting in his rage that Darien could not see it. "She spit on me!"

Darien lifted his brows. "And I'm supposed to help you after you called me a baka why?"

Rini slid down from Serena's lap. "This is dumb," she announced. "And so are you," she added, looking at Buji. "Serena, let's go home."

"I'm not dumb!" Buji exclaimed, jumping down from the booth and standing in her way.

"Prove it."

"I know what five times six is!"

"Yeah, your IQ," said Rini, tossing her head.

"OOOOOOOOOOOOOH!" howled Asanuma in delight. "That's my girl!"

The rest of the older generation watched the verbal volley arc back and forth like a tennis ball over a net.

"I've never seen Buji like this before," said Serena bemusedly.

"Now you know how the rest of us felt," said Motoki.

L

If the gang had thought that Buji and Rini's interaction was shocking, they were in for an even bigger bombshell.

Serena saw Buji's mother first. Her jaw dropped, and she leaned automatically to the side to get a better look, which placed her half in Darien's lap. She had not even the presence of mind to notice this, so distracted was she by the sight of Buji's mother entering the café. (Rest assured, however, that Darien noticed.)

"MAYUKO-SAN?" she blurted out, and then immediately colored, surprised and embarrassed by the volume of her own voice.

It caught Iwara-san's attention, though and even cut through Buji and Rini's argument. They looked up as Iwara-san approached, and everyone else saw what Serena had noticed when Mayuko first walked in the door: Mayuko was, quite clearly, pregnant.

Darien, who had been able to sense the dual presence of Mayuko's body and discern immediately what it meant, chucked Serena's chin to close her gaping mouth. "It's rude to stare," he murmured at her – then ignored his own preaching as he stared at Serena with the only sight he had: inhaling her warm scent, fingering the silken curls that spilled across his lap, and listening to the whirl of her heartbeat.

Then Buji scrambled over them both to reach his mom. A sneaker in the gut broke Darien's concentration as effectively as a bucket of ice water. Which he kind of needed at the moment.

"Sit here, sit here, Iwara-san," urged Motoki, jumping up from his seat and drawing a cushioned chair over for her from a vacant table. Lita beamed at his thoughtfulness.

"Thank you, Motoki-san." Mayuko was doing some beaming of her own, her face absolutely suffused with happiness. She hugged Buji, then, her face sobering suddenly. "How's your father doing?"

Motoki's smile faltered momentarily, then returned in full wattage. "Not as well as you," he said heartily. "Congratulations! I didn't know!"

Before too many curious glances could be directed Motoki's way, Buji tugged on his mother's jacket. "Did you find out, Mommy? What is it?"

Mayuko's glow returned, like a prism aglow. "You're going to have a sister, Buji."

Serena's delighted squeal actually punctured Darien's eardrums. Liquid trickled in his ear. Wincing, he reached surreptitiously into his subspace pocket beneath the table and willed the Golden Crystal to repair as much of the damage as it could without visible golden sparks.

"That's so wonderful!" Serena was squealing, bouncing up and down in her seat. "Oh my gosh, what are you gonna name her can I baby-sit her when did you find out oh my gosh I'm so happy for you Mayuko-san – "

Darien smiled quiet congratulations in Mayuko's direction and then picked Serena up and transferred her to his other side, where she could reach Mayuko to enfold her in a hug without swallowing him in the gooey, estrogen-y goodness. And without distracting him so much with her leaning across him that he did something that wouldn't be suitable for _Asanuma's_ eyes, much less Rini and Buji's.

Darien winced again. _Where _were these lecherous thoughts coming from?

He volunteered – by volunteered, he meant grabbed them by their collars and held them back – to walk ahead with Buji and Rini so that Mayuko and Serena could talk on the way home. With Buji and Rini on either side of him, each pretending that the other didn't exist because of something that Buji had done to Rini's milkshake with ketchup, it was a silent enough trip that with only a tad of auditory amplification by the Golden Crystal he could hear the two women talking.

"I'm so happy," Mayuko was telling Serena. "I thought that Buji was all I would have of Daisuke. But now I have her…"

"_Have_ you decided on a name yet?" Serena wanted to know. Darien could almost hear the gears moving in her head; she was probably concocting a long list of anime characters' names to propose to Mayuko if she hadn't already decided on a name. He sighed. _He_ would let Serena do whatever she wanted if he was her husband, but he would like to think that most other men wouldn't be willing to have seven children just so that their insane mother could name them after the original seven Digidestined – scratch that, he would like to think that no other man married Serena.

He sighed again and tuned back into the conversation, hoping to be distracted.

"…yet," Mayuko was saying. "Buji has several ideas. But I refuse to name my daughter after a Power Ranger _or_ a Ninja Turtle."

Darien snorted.

Beside him, Buji grumbled. "I said we could change it to Michaelangel_a_."

L

A/N: Give me your guesses and suggestions, please!


	19. Chapter 19

MORE STUFF IN REFERENCE TO RINI THINKING THAT SERE'LL DIE IN NEXT 20 YRS B/C SHE'S NOT IN FUTURE

A/N: Long author's note this time, guys. To start off, I just want to remind everyone that this story is AU. While (some of) the characters are the same, their personalities and relationships may not be (coughPlutocough).

Next, I would like to point out, purely as a matter of satisfying my own ego, that Serena's erroneous use of "suffrage" last chapter was meant to be humorous. Serena seems to me like the sort of person who would make the error of thinking women's suffrage meant unfair treatment to women – that's why Rini snorts. She's not stupid, just a little inattentive in Government class. (If Darien had been present, he would have corrected her, and it would have turned into a little WAFF-y moment – and, as always, I deprived you guys of that. Muahahaha!)

Thirdly, YAY to all you observant readers! Some of you are right on the dot! (And some of you aren't, but it's the off-the-wall predictions that give me the most delight.) Also, thanks, everyone, for the well wishes on exams!

Second-to-last, thank yoooooooouuuuuuuuuu as always to Jade-eye!

And last, I have this pretty cool (at least I think so) tidbit that I wanted to share. This chapter was already written and waiting for editing when one morning, I got bored and decided to read some Sailor Moon manga. I was quite shocked when I opened SuperS #3 (the one with the Outers on the front) and saw what Saturn was reading:

…_indeed it shall be revealed_

_Indeed the time has come for the advent_

_As I mouth 'advent'_

_My vision is disturbed_

_By the monstrous image of the worldly ghost_

_Somewhere in the desert_

_A monster with a lion's body and a human face_

_Glares blankly and without emotion like the sun_

_And slowly moves its feet_

_Around in circles in the shadows of the frightened desert birds._

Now, of course, the reason for my excitement is not clear to you yet, but read to the end of the chapter and it'll (probably) make sense. Maybe. Okay, I might just be imagining the awesomeness.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon, the above quotation, or any of the proper nouns in this chapter (except Mikai and Buji). Or Fruits Basket.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Nineteen: Identities Revealed –

The Abominable Angst Monster Attacks!

(Really the title is "Identities Revealed." I just had a sudden irrepressible urge to do a Naruto-style episode title.)

L

Between the time the group left the café that afternoon and the same time the next day, five more white-faced, black-bodied youma and one of the more normal, buxom youma attacked the district. Tuxedo Mask took out the normal youma and one of the white-faced ones; he allowed Asanuma and Motoki to deal with the other attacks, as the white-faced youma were weak enough to serve as good training for the two Shittenou. Asanuma fell upon the youma like a hyper puppy, shouting and jumping. Despite – or perhaps because of – his enthusiasm, he took out the other four of the youma, while Motoki only singed the ear of one of them.

Neither Lita nor Serena transformed for more than one of these attacks, Mask and Asanuma using the excuse that the Shittenou needed as much experience as they could get in controlled situations like this. Lita chafed at the restriction, but she was herself vaguely anxious about what might happen if she transformed. Not even a single strand of green hair was visible in her ponytail, but she still worried that the green fog would take over again and that she would hurt Motoki – maybe even kill him.

Serena, who needed time to train by herself to keep herself for when Miss Lanai returned, did not protest either. She also agreed wholeheartedly with Darien that Asanuma and Motoki should get as much practice as they could now, when the weak youma were showing up only one or two at a time and when Mask was there to play referee. She knew he could be trusted to keep them safe (and if he couldn't, she would sense it through the string – slowly becoming stronger, though still not a rope – between them).

Furthermore, what Rini had told them about being possessed had rattled her. She suddenly felt suspicious and skittish of her transformed ego. Would Sailor Moon take her over, as Jupiter had done to Lita? What would she do? Kill Darien – or kiss him?

Despite all her concerns, the end result of not participating in the battles was that Serena had extra free time. When Rini and Lita (whom Rini seemed to idolize, to Serena's vague envy) went shopping at the farmers' market one day and Serena stayed home to finish a history paper, she found herself finishing earlier than she had anticipated.

Her father arrived home from work and found her drifting aimlessly around the house like a piece of seaweed.

"Free time?" he said, eyebrows aloft. "Well, what say you drive me to the post office? I've got to send these photos to Honshu to be proofed."

Serena hadn't driven in ages, since before the school year started. She grabbed the keys from her dad and scampered into the driver's seat.

L

"Okay." Haruka gave the Infinity uniform collar one last tug in the mirror and turned around, arms spread wide. "How do I look?"

Michiru raked her eyes up and down Haruka's frame. "A little scrawny."

"Well, the prince's no beefcake, either, so we can only hope that our little moonbrain has a thing for skinny guys."

"That's the spirit." Michiru stepped closer and plucked a piece of lint from the breast pocket of Haruka's blazer.

Haruka looked down at Michiru's wavy blonde head. A frown creased her brow. "I know we were already planning this whole seduction slash jealously thing to get closer to our two little renegades, but now that Pluto's the one telling us to do it, I'm a little afraid."

"Well, _that_'s not very manly." Michiru patted Haruka's pocket calmly. "Just turn that charming wit I know you have onto little Serena, and I know she'll turn into a blushing puddle. And don't worry about Pluto." She smiled softly. "She'll do what she does, and we'll…go with the flow."

Haruka laughed.

L

They made it to the post office safely. Serena even managed to park without driving over the parking bumper the way she usually did. But on the way back home, her luck screeched to a halt.

She'd driven through the intersection a dozen times; it was a four-way with only two stop signs. She was on the road with the right of way, so she didn't bother to slow down as she cruised through –

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEK.

Serena was jolted sideways in the seat. The safety belt bit her nearly in half. She blinked rapidly. The acrid scent of burned tire already cloyed her nostrils. "Dad?"

"I'm fine, sweetheart." His voice was tight but completely normal other than that. She looked over at him and saw him completely uninjured. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, just – " She winced, touching the spot where the belt had chewed into her skin. Then she twisted around, looking behind them and already apologizing for whatever mistake she'd made. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have been driving so fast, but I thought there was – "

"A stop sign there," finished Kenji, undoing his seatbelt. "So did I. You didn't do anything wrong, you had the right of way." He opened his door and got out. Serena followed suit, body tensely aware for any injuries it might feel, but she felt only the chafe-burn from the seatbelt.

There was a black sports car halfway into the intersection, the metal of its front fender slightly crumpled where it had hit the side of Kenji's car.

A sandy-haired guy was clambering out of the driver's side. "Are you alright?" he demanded breathlessly.

"No harm to us," Kenji said politely. "You?"

"I'm completely fine." The slender guy, Serena realized as she took in his hideous plaid uniform, was actually quite young. He was also apparently far more concerned by their well-being than his own. "I'm very sorry. I didn't see a stop sign when I was crossing, but now…"

He pointed at the curb. Serena could just make out patches of silver metal – somehow the stop sign had been uprooted and left to lie, hidden by the grass.

"Would you look at that?" Kenji's voice ruffled like indignant feathers. "Someone must have knocked it over and kept on driving without a second thought! It's not your fault, son."

"Still," the guy insisted. His earnest blue eyes sparkled in the sunlight. "Let me pay for the repairs, it was my fault. I shouldn't have been driving so fast, stop sign or not."

"Hmph." Kenji eyed the boy, clearly taking in his expensive-looking leather loafers. If his shoes and his sports car were anything to go by, the boy clearly wasn't lacking in funds. "Alright. But let me call in this downed stop sign."

L

The nearby garage to which they had driven smelled of oil, burned rubber, and sweat. Serena had smelled such a combination so strongly only once before: at the prom, when Zoicite dragged her through Darien's windshield. She held her sleeve over her nose as subtly as she could once the mechanic who had filled out their information had walked away.

Not subtly enough, apparently. "Stinks, huh?" said the sandy-haired guy. "You think that's bad, you should smell my socks after gym." He winced. "That was weird. Sorry."

Serena grinned a little as her dad chortled. The slender guy's hair and his embarrassed wince reminded her of Motoki. "That's okay."

He stuck out a hand. "I'm Haruka, by the way. Haruka Tennou.

His name dislodged some vague recognition in Serena's mind, but she couldn't figure out why. Her father, too, wore a scrunched expression of concentration as though trying to place the name.

Serena cleared her throat and took courtesy upon herself. "I'm Serena Tsukino. This is my dad Kenji Tsukino."

Suddenly Kenji's cell phone rang. He glanced at the screen and grunted. "Excuse me," he said. "It's my editor, I'll be right back." He walked toward the other, slightly quieter end of the garage.

"So, you go to Azabu?" Tennou-san nodded at her red and blue fuku.

"Uh-huh," she replied, looking again at his red, green, and reddish-brown flannel-like blazer. "And your uniform, I recognize it, but – "

"But you've blocked it from your memory because it's so visually traumatizing." He grinned.

She mirrored his mischievous expression. "Exactly."

He laughed. "Infinity. In Myugen, you know – "

"I know," she said, eyes wide. Infinity was the most prestigious school in the area, private or public. People who went there were either rich or had IQ's out of the exosphere. It was where Ami's mother had wanted her to go.

"Oh, no, here comes the awe." Tennou-san laughed awkwardly, watching her. "It's really not a big deal. I'm not a genius, and I'm not a filthy rich bastard."

Serena looked pointedly at the shiny black sports car, which had a mechanic's legs sticking out from underneath it.

"Maybe a little rich," Tennou-san conceded. "But please don't let that stop our conversation. Usually when people find out they suddenly think I'm too good to talk to or something."

"I'm sorry," said Serena sympathetically. There were clouds to every silver lining, weren't there? Seeing Tennou-san's suddenly wistful expression, she tried to cheer him up. "Hey, are you so sure they stopped talking to you because of that? Maybe they just couldn't stand to look at that uniform anymore!"

Laughter broke the wistful mask on Tennou-san's face. "It's a distinct possibility."

The ice broken, they began to chat as they watched the mechanics work on the cars. After a few minutes, the jean-clad legs protruding from beneath Serena's dad's car pushed out to reveal an oil-stained shirt – and a head of bright red hair. Like, actually red. The color of Rei's heels when she was transformed.

Serena stared, in awed fascination, as the mechanic – who, like Haruka, didn't seem much older than her – walked toward them, wiping his hands on a filthy rag.

"How is it?" Tennou-san asked as he approached.

"Just a few dents, really. I was checking the transmission for any damage." The mechanic stopped in front of them, pulling a sheet of paper from his back pocket. "It's an extra hundred if you want it done now. Not that I expect that'll make a difference to you."

Tennou-san shrugged, smiling vaguely. "You expect right."

Serena glanced over at her father where he still stood talking, quite sure that he wouldn't want anyone forking out extra cash to pay for their car.

"Okay, then." The mechanic moved to turn back around. His eyes flicked across Serena as he turned. She stiffened, seeing him do a double-take as her facial scars snagged his attention.

"Hang on!" he said, staring at her.

Serena clasped her hands tightly behind her back.

"You're Serena?" he said. "Tsukino? Darien's friend."

Serena blinked. Of the many reactions that she had expected from this crimson-haired mechanic, that had not been one of them. She felt as though she had been chewing on a baked potato and suddenly bitten down on a chunk of cookie dough inside it.

"Yes," she said cautiously. She hadn't realized that Darien had any acquaintances outside of school…

Then she remembered. The mechanic who had fixed Asanuma's car and aroused his annoyance –

"You're Asanuma's Darien-rival!" she blurted out. Then promptly colored scarlet with mortification.

But he laughed. "Is that what Curly calls me? I knew that kid seemed like a hoot."

"You two know each other?"

Serena and the mechanic looked at Tennou-san.

"Sort of," began Serena at the same time that the mechanic said, "We have a mutual friend."

He turned back to Serena and stuck out his hand. "I've robbed you of the privacy of your name, but mine's Mikai. I was hoping I'd meet you soon."

"Were you?" Serena glowed. Darien must have talked about her to Mikai. She wondered what he had said.

Then she grew worried. Exactly what _had_ he said about her?

Mikai must have seen the progression of her emotions across her face, for he reassured her quickly, "Nothing bad. Actually, he was pretty clammed-up about you. I had to learn about you from Curly.

"Oh." Serena's excitement and worry deflated simultaneously.

"He just wanted to keep you to himself." Mikai winked. "He never did like to share, our Darien, even when he was little."

Excitement lifted its head in Serena's chest again. Here was someone who had known Darien when he was young!

"Was he really grumpy back then?" she asked eagerly.

But they were interrupted by her father's return.

"Sorry for that," Kenji said, stepping up next to Serena. He looked at Mikai and Tennou expectantly. "So what's the verdict?"

"Half an hour, tops," said Haruka, smiling at Kenji before glancing at Mikai.

"Thirty minutes," agreed the mechanic, although the little quirk of his pierced eyebrow gave Serena the impression that he was humoring Tennou-san. "We'll do our best, Racecar Driver-sama."

"_That_'s it!" exclaimed Kenji as Mikai returned to the car. "I knew I recognized your name! You're Haruka Tennou, the Formula One racer!"

"Former racer," corrected Tennou-san in a very polite tone. He leaned in conspiratorially, shooting Serena a grin, and lowering his voice. "I'm taking time off to focus on school."

"Very commendable!" Kenji nodded in approval. "You go to Infinity?"

"Yes, sir. I was just telling Serena-san about it."

"Good school. Very strenuous, I've heard, but a very high foreign university acceptance rate among its graduates."

"Yes, sir." Tennou-san's eyes were twinkling with the same air of humor that Mikai's had held before. "Azabu also has an excellent reputation. Several of my classmates are hung up on trying to beat one student especially – a Darien Shields?"

Kenji cleared his throat. "Yes, but as I said, Infinity students have been accepted to foreign universities all over the world – "

"Darien was invited to Yale, Dad," Serena bristled. "_They_ asked _him_. He's the top student at Azabu," she informed Tennou-san, completely unaware of the pride glowing in her voice. "He speaks four languages and has universities from all over banging on his door trying to get him to come to their school."

"And has he accepted any?" inquired Tennou-san with interest.

Kenji cleared his throat. "What are you planning to major in, Tennou-san?"

Serena sighed, realizing that her father was determined to keep the conversation miles away from Darien. There was no point in trying to dissuade him, either; he would just puff up like an indignant blowfish. Tennou-san caught her eye, smiling with just one side of his mouth. He understood exactly what her father was doing, and he was humoring him. Serena returned it in kind. She felt the smiles stretching her scars tight around her mouth, but Tennou-san did not seem not notice. He did not flinch the way Rini always did. Instead, he winked at her and continued talking to her father.

Serena smiled more broadly as she turned to watch Mikai and the other mechanics work on the car. That wonderful warm feeling of having found a brand-new friend – maybe even two – wrapped her like a warm coat.

L

"Haruka Tennou?" repeated Lita during morning break the next day. She seemed far more interested in him than in Serena's discovery of Darien's unlikely childhood friend. "_The_ Haruka Tennou?"

"Yeah." Serena chewed on her pencil, staring out the classroom window at the freshmen doing laps on the track. "Hey, Lita, do you think Darien would be annoyed if I asked Mikai about him – ?"

"But – but he's _famous_!" Lita sputtered. "What is Haruka Tennou doing _here_? I heard that he'd taken a break from racing and dropped off the planet – "

Serena put down her pen and eyed her friend with amusement sparkling in her eyes. "Why, Lita, if I didn't know any better I'd say you had a crush!"

Lita flushed a dull red. "No way," she said firmly. "Despite recent events, I think Motoki is the only non-pig man on the planet." As Serena continued her Cheshire Cat imitation, Lita flushed darker. "Maybe just a little crush. It's not against the rules to look, is it?"

"Of course not," Serena assured her seriously. She paused, then grinned impishly again. "Although he looks kinda girly if you ask me."

Molly, who was chatting with Melvin behind them and had overheard Serena's last sentence, leaned over with a wide grin. "That's rich coming from you, Serena, considering Darien's eyelashes are only about fifty miles long."

Now it was Serena's turn to flush a bright pink. "Molly-chan!"

Lita quickly changed the subject. "So, what was Tennou-san wearing? Was he driving really fast?"

L

"You met _Haruka Tennou_?" was the first thing Motoki demanded as Serena arrived at the tree for lunch. Lita had clearly apprised him of the previous day's events.

"More l-l-like c-c-crashed into him, r-r-really," said Serena, zipping her coat to her chin as she sat on the grass, teeth chattering. A cold snap had arrived that morning. "Sh-should we r-r-really sit out here, you g-guys? It's kind of c-c-cold."

No sooner had she chattered this out than a pullover landed atop her head, covering her in a tent of red fleece.

"Stop whining." Darien sat down next to Asanuma in his school uniform sans jacket. "We'll eat inside tomorrow."

"But aren't you c-c-cold?" protested Serena, fighting her way out from under the pullover.

Darien gave her a withering expression, which Serena returned with an upward throw of her arms. "Sorry, I should have known better than to ask the All-Powerful-Tuxedo-Macho if he was cold!"

"Enough of that," interrupted Motoki. "Haruka Tennou! My dad _loves _him!"

"So does Li– " began Serena before Lita clapped a hand over her mouth. Serena's laughing eyes peeked up at her from beneath her golden bangs as the brunette glowered, red-faced.

"Oh," said Motoki, looking back and forth between them. "…I see."

"Our group was way overdue for a love triangle," noted Asanuma flippantly. "I'm only surprised it didn't happen sooner."

"It did," retorted Lita. "Or did you forget about your impressively-biceped rival for Shields's heart?"

Asanuma blinked. "Serena has impressive biceps?"

Serena broke out into gales of laughter.

Darien pinched the bridge of his nose. "Please tell me we're not talking about Mikai."

"That's EXACTLY who I'm talking about," said Lita with relish.

Darien lifted a brow. "And you're jealous of him?" he said to Asanuma.

It seemed to be a day for blushing. "Don't flatter yourself," said Asanuma defiantly. "I'd rather eat my toenails."

"I'll tell you what you can eat," said Darien. "Your heart out."

Even Lita chortled at that one. Serena shrieked gleefully, grabbing Darien's hand. "High five!" They both went abruptly still –

"You guys keep changing the subject!" Motoki cried, seizing Serena's sleeve. "_Haruka Tennou_! Can you get his autograph?" He seemed to be entirely over the news that Lita fancied the racecar driver.

"Huh?" Serena blinked. "Oh, um…sorry, Motoki, I don't think so."

Lita took advantage of Serena's distraction to tug her back over to her other side, away from Shields, whose eyes had gone suspiciously bright when Serena had touched his hand.

"We didn't get a chance to exchange phone numbers or anything," Serena continued apologetically, apparently oblivious to Lita's womanhandling of her. "Dad dragged me off. I doubt I'll ever meet him again."

Darien sat forward, brow furrowed. "Wait. What are you all talking about?"

Motoki launched into the exciting story of how Serena had gotten into a fender-bender with the famous F1 driver and held – gasp! – an entire conversation with him as their car was fixed.

"Hmph," was Darien's response when Motoki had finished. The crease between his brows was now a Grand Canyon.

"I met Mikai," inserted Serena, either oblivious to Darien's glower or ignoring it. "He's really nice."

"Guys aren't nice, Odango," said Darien darkly. "They just have motives."

"And you're no exception, right?" Lita began, but Asanuma cut her off.

"Hey!" he exclaimed. "I take exception to that!"

At this the conversation degenerated into an argument about whether Asanuma liked girls for who they were on the inside or because they were hot - which, of course, led to a spate of bad puns about Rei. But Lita didn't forget the look she'd seen in Darien's eyes – and Darien didn't forget the motives that had been running through his own head.

L

Serena's prediction that she would never see Haruka Tennou again was disproved that very afternoon.

Lita noticed the tall, sandy-haired guy in the designer sunglasses leaning casually against the gatepost first. The faintest pink tint bloomed in her cheeks to match her rose earrings. She elbowed Serena, who was in mid-rant about the aggravating, constantly-foiled romance in her latest manga obsession and who was rather offended by Lita's interruption.

" – then they _almost_ kissed – ow!" she huffed out in a whoosh of air. "Lita!"

"Look!" Lita ordered under her breath. "Over there!"

Serena looked. "Whoah, is that _Miss Haruna_ kissing that guy?"

"What?" Lita's eyes bulged; she followed Serena's intrigued gaze. Why, it did indeed appear that their math teacher was locking lips with a business-suited hottie in the parking lot. No one else had ginger hair like _that_. The sight of the man tipping Miss Haruna back as though they were tangoing completely wiped Haruka Tennou from her mind. "_Dang_, look at them go!"

A sudden low whistle pierced the air behind them. Serena jumped, spinning around with her hand over her heart.

"Is that a _teacher_ putting on that scandalous display out in the parking lot?" Haruka Tennou was leaning over Serena so close that he spoke directly into her ear.

At first Lita wasn't sure whether to feel amused or annoyed by his proximity to Serena. But then the barely visible blush beneath Serena's scars and the thought of how Shields would fume if he was here to witness Haruka Tennou flirting with Serena nudged her feelings into the realm of benevolent amusement. She resisted the urge to cackle.

"Tennou-san!" Serena exclaimed.

"Ohayou, Tsukino-san," said Tennou. He straightened, his chin coming within mere inches of brushing one of Serena's hairbuns, and flicked his glinting, luxuriously lashed eyes at Miss Haruna again. "We never see _that _sort of thing at Infinity."

"You get traumatized by your uniforms, we get traumatized by our teachers," Serena quipped, stepping back a little. She tipped forward on her heels, throwing her arms around Lita's shoulders. "Tennou-san, this is my friend Lita Kino. Lita, this is Haruka Tennou."

Lita didn't have enough time to blush before Tennou gripped her hand, shaking it. He looked at her with a laughing glint in his eye that seemed as though he was laughing at an unspoken joke; she felt the urge to blush quickly leaving her face.

"A pleasure, Kino-san. But you have to call me Haruka. I hope we will be comrades."

Despite the wattage of the devastatingly scorching, searching glance with which his eyes swept her, Lita furrowed her brow. _Comrades?_ What, was Haruka Russian? He certainly looked it, but none of the magazines had mentioned that he was…

"Aha!" exclaimed Serena, who had been rummaging in her schoolbag. She produced a pad of paper and a purple gel pen. "Tennou-san – "

"Haruka," Haruka corrected smoothly.

"Haruka-san," Serena agreed amiably, "we were wondering if you wouldn't mind doing us a favor? We have a friend who's a huge fan, and if he could have your autograph he would probably just explode with happiness."

"Of course," said Haruka graciously, taking the purple pen and the paper from her. "To whom shall I address it?"

" 'Motoki, whose milkshakes are the very yummiest in the whole wide world,' " dictated Serena solemnly.

Lita watched as Haruka Tennou wrote Serena's recitation with an equal sobriety, a considerable feat considering the message, the color of the ink, and that fact that the pad of paper was pink and in the shape of Hello Kitty's head. Curiosity joined her amusement as Serena invited Haruka to accompany them to pick up Rini from school.

This scenario would not have been novel to any of Serena's other friends: Molly, Ami, Rei, Motoki, Asanuma, or even Darien. They had all been witness – and accustomed – to boys gravitating naturally toward Serena, leaning into her frequent laughter; bright, easily bestowed smile; and the accepting but unassuming aura that surrounded her like a faint perfume.

Lita, though, she had come after Darien had scared Seiko away – and, in so doing, warned off her other pursuers. And then Zoicite had sliced Serena's face to ribbons, and no guys had really spared Serena a second glance save to gape at the silver scars on her face. Consequently Lita had never before witnessed boys bending unabashedly backwards for a glimpse of Serena's smile – none but Darien. She had thought that such a sappy reaction was singular to Darien.

But now, observing Haruka's offer to carry Serena's bag and how he watched her intently as she spoke with gesturing hands, Lita discovered that that magnetic pull could exist between Serena and boys other than the reincarnated Earth prince. The discovery both relieved and pleased her. Serena deserved no less than adoration – adoration from the highest of admirers, and the skilled, gorgeous, and intelligent F1 driver Haruka Tennou certainly belonged to that echelon.

Rini, however, she discovered when they arrived at school, had a different opinion.

"Who's he?" she demanded as she sprang away from the swing set against which she had been leaning.

"Rini, this is Haruka-san," Serena introduced. "He's a new friend of ours. And Haruka-san, this is my cousin Rini."

Haruka bent nearly double to place his eyes at the same level as Rini's. "It's nice to meet you, Rini. You look a lot like your cousin."

This was true enough, since Rini was wearing her shiny brown hair in buns like Serena's, but Rini apparently took it as an insult.

"Don't bother kissing up to me," she said, rolling her eyes. She glanced between him and Serena. "Is THIS one your boyfriend?"

Serena flushed; Haruka laughed. Lita contained herself. Then, before a reply could be made, Buji came skidding up in the mulch, sending up a spray of it.

"Onee-chans!" he exclaimed, rocketing into first Lita, then Serena, with huge hugs. He stayed clinging to Serena and eyed Haruka. "Who are _you_?"

"Is there an echo here?" said Haruka, lifting his eyebrows.

"No echo, just a dummy," said Rini. Apparently they were no longer having their silence contest of the day before, for then she said to Buji, "You can let go of her now, Iwara-baka."

"Excuse you," said Buji, turning his head around but not unknotting his arms from around Serena, "I am your sempai. You must call me Iwara-_sempai_."

"An idiot by any other name is still as stupid," retorted Rini. "Besides, I won't be in kindergarten for much longer." She tugged at Serena's shirt on the opposite side from where Buji stood. "Right, Serena?"

"Um," said Serena.

Haruka and Lita, by now, were both chuckling at the sight of Serena with kids hanging on her like towels on a rack. Buji frowned and glowered at Haruka. "What are you laughing at?"

"Buji!" Serena scolded. "I know your mother raised you better than to act so rudely!"

"I think it's a valid question." Rini let go of Serena and folded her arms. "Does he find us amusing?"

"Hey!" Buji yelped. "I asked the question. You stay out of it!"

"I'm allying with you, you idiot!"

Haruka was laughing harder by now, doubled over and clutching his stomach. "This is great! Where did you find these kids?"  
"Hey!" Buji exclaimed. His eyes were wide, as though he had suddenly been struck by a horrifying thought. "Serena-nee-chan, is he your _boyfriend_?"

"There really IS an echo," gasped Haruka, wiping tears from his eyes. "Please, when these two get married, invite me to the wedding."

Buji gasped. "You're getting MARRIED?" he demanded, turning a heartbroken face on Serena. "What about Darien-baka?"

The fun-and-games atmosphere collapsed. Even Haruka seemed to sense the tension, looking over at Serena with an intent expression.

Rini was the one who broke the silence. "Idiot," she said to Buji. "He was talking about us." Then she glared at Haruka. "I don't appreciate your asinine _comedy._" This last word dripped with disdain.

"Rini." Serena's voice was quiet but stern as steel. "Do not speak to people that way."

Rini's eyes flicked from Haruka to Serena, and Lita was just able to see her expression flicker, her blue eyes widening for the barest of seconds. Then she was glaring at Serena, too.

"I'll speak to people however I want!" she said. "You're not my mother!"

"This has nothing to do with me being your mother," said Serena. "Haruka-san is my friend just like you are, and I don't let people speak to my friends like that. I didn't let Darien speak like that to you, and I won't let you speak like that to Haruka-san."

Rini's eyes flashed. She crossed her arms and spun on her heel, stalking away from Serena.

Several feet away she halted, spun around again and ground out, "Sorry." Then she spun back around again and took off running down the street.

Lita sighed, directing her eyes to the sky.

"I apologize, Haruka-san," she heard Serena say, bowing. "I hope we can meet again sometime. Lita, Buji, I'll see you later." And then Serena took off, running after Rini.

Haruka stepped forward, about to go after Serena. Lita stepped in front of him. "Not now, Haruka-san," she said. "It's a family thing."

L

With the youma attacking so frequently, it was almost inevitable that Rini would run straight into one of them. And of course it was one of the attacks involving a higher-level youma, not just one of the white-faced energy-suckers.

There was an ice cream and candy parlor only a few blocks away from the elementary school. Parents frequently took their children there as rewards for doing well on tests or being brave when they got their shots. The youma had struck there, affecting even the people outside, so that pedestrians on the street outside the shop had fallen unconscious.

Rini went sprawling over one of the prone bodies.

"Ow," she hissed, crawling to her feet and putting a hand to her scraped chin. Then she heard the familiar smoky cackling inside the ice cream parlor, and she froze.

"Are you the princess, little one? She's very good at disguises – oh, no, I guess you're not. And not you. Oh, you're a cute one – oops, not anymore! Not you, not you, not you – ahaaa…"

Automatically, Rini looked down. And from beneath her suddenly-drooping lids, she saw the glittering white thread of energy twisting from her chest to the inside of the ice cream parlor.

_No! _her mind screamed like a prisoner pounding against cell bars. _Not again!_

"Little princess, where are you?"

A shadow appeared against the frosted glass of the parlor door. Two points, like horns, stuck out at the top of its head, and there was a spiky tutu – it was Catzi.

Rini's drowsing mind struggled against the slumber that sludged it. Catzi was the weakest, most hot-headed sister; she could get away from her, she just had to –

Catzi kicked the glass of the door out and stepped out onto the sidewalk, a white-faced youma close behind her. Her kohl-lined purple eyes followed the line of the white energy-thread…

To a white carnation nestled in the breast pocket of one of the unconscious men on the sidewalk.

"What?" growled Catzi in her smoky voice. "What in the – "

Rini heard her stiletto heels clicking closer. Catzi was going to bend down and pick her up; she was slow, but not _that_ slow. She would have to notice soon that the man was already emitting a thread of blue energy…

"Step away from him!"

It was Sailor Moon's voice!

Rini was so surprised and so relieved that she nearly fell out of her transformation. Hard, she bit down on her cheek to keep her concentration. She felt air rush across her petals as Catzi jumped away from the man and to her feet.

"I've heard about YOU!" Catzi's voice sneered. "Blondie! You realize how flat you look in that hideous sailor suit, right?"

"You realize that your tutu doesn't hide all that cellulite on your thighs, don't you?" Serena's voice retorted.

Rini heard Catzi's shriek, a whoosh of air – and then felt energy swoop over and into her. Sailor Moon had dispatched the white-faced youma with a nonverbally activated tiara.

Rini felt a surge of awareness, then panic. The return of her drained energy from the youma broke her concentration. Her body stretched and unfolded into her normal form with a _pop_!

Two gasps reached her ears.

"YOU!" screeched Catzi.

"Rini!" gasped Sailor Moon.

Rini scrambled to her feet, backwards from the rousing pedestrians, watching them both.

Catzi lunged, Rini darted, and a flash of white and blue landed in front of her. The clash of Catzi's razor nails meeting Sailor Moon's tiara-shield shook the very air around them.

"Oh, no, blondie," Catzi growled. "The princess is mine."

"Princess?" panted Sailor Moon back. Rini saw her arms falter.

Catzi's feral purple eyes glittered hungrily at Rini over Sailor Moon's shoulder. Rini sucked in a breath.

Sailor Moon heaved forward with a pained grunt. Halfway through the motion, her shield shrank back into a sword and sliced Catzi across the stomach.

An angry red line sprang up on Catzi's purple jumpsuit as she stumbled backward.

"Yoouuu…" she hissed at Sailor Moon, eyes crazier and more savage than ever. Red flecked her lips. The red blossomed rapidly on her abdomen. "I'll rip your insides out and make a necklace for your corpse!"

A black hole opened behind her. Still spitting threats, she backed into it, and it closed silently after her.

Leaving Sailor Moon and Rini in the still afternoon, amidst the stirring bodies.

Rini became aware of her heavy breaths, her pounding heart – and of everything that Serena had just heard and seen.

Sailor Moon turned around slowly, her blue eyes unreadable. "Are you hurt?"

Rini shook her head, watching her. "You?"

Sailor Moon did not answer. In fact, she seemed as though she had not heard Rini at all. She picked Rini up, and Rini did not protest, did not even squirm. She just hung her arms around Sailor Moon's neck so that she would not fall off and stayed silent as Sailor Moon leapt to the rooftops.

She knew now. There was no doubt about it. From the empty look in her eyes and her heart pumping as hard as Rini's own against Rini's arm, Rini knew that Serena, stupid Serena, was the first one to find out her secret.

L

Darien had felt Serena transform, but by the time he had reached the ice cream parlor, she was gone, and so was the youma. She had not detransformed yet, he sensed that. Feeling their string, he felt her tense and distant. Come, her presence ordered, filling his mind with the image of his apartment, and that was all.

He caught up to them – for it was them, Sailor Moon and Rini – one roof before his apartment balcony. Moon leapt, then he leapt, and they entered his apartment silently. He felt Sailor Moon put Rini down and felt her detransform. He followed suit.

"May I use your phone?" Serena asked in a very cordial voice.

"Of course," he said, jaw tensing at her tone. He reached out to sense Rini and picked up her thundering heart, the metallic odor of blood, and strangely, the clean scent of carnations. "What's going on?"

"Just a second," said Serena's voice. "I'm going to call Asanuma over."

The smell of perspiration from Rini's fists increased as Serena went to the kitchen and made the call. When Serena's footsteps padded back into the living room, Rini said in a tight voice, "What about Lita?"

Darien took a step toward both of them, his senses straining so hard that he felt his blood vessels pumping in his ears. What had them so upset? He could sense Serena's heart whirring like a frightened hummingbird.

Yet her voice betrayed nothing to him when she spoke. "This is your secret to tell, Rini," he listened to her say. "I thought you would want Asanuma to know, and Darien deserves to know, but you shouldn't have to tell anyone else if you don't want to. I'll wait in the lobby until you're done."

And he felt her turning around –

"Hold on a second!" Darien strode forward and grabbed for the rope, only to feel Serena scrabbling away from it. He dropped it with a growl of frustration, stopping less than a meter away from her. "What's going on here? WHATdo I deserve to know?"

"Calm down, Darien," he heard Serena tell him sharply. "You're scaring her."

"I'm not scared!" said Rini's voice, just as sharply. But a current of panic rushed beneath her voice. "…Serena!"

Darien felt Serena turn from the door. "Yes, Rini?"

"You can't – don't – " Rini's voice was cracking. Darien heard her swallow. "Stay." He heard her swallow again. "Please, I mean."

Darien's ears twitched. He heard barely, suddenly, Serena's blood swirl and roar like whitewater rapids in her veins, wild. He took another involuntary step toward her, razor-tipped roses materializing in his hand to use against whatever had frightened her so intensely –

She stepped away from him again, pressing against the door. "Rini, it's really none of my business – "

"If it's my business it's your business," said Darien. He faced her, willing his eyes to work, to let him see her. They didn't, and his fists clenched as he heard Serena's heart only skip faster. Something sharp bit into his palms.

Then she laughed – a nervous, short little titter. "No," she said. "No, it really isn't."

"Serena." Rini's feet pounded across the floor as she ran and grabbed Serena's arm. "_Please_!"

And that, just those two little words from that one little girl, drained the resistance from Serena. He heard her surrender in the yielding decrescendo of her heartbeat. One word from a girl she had known for less than a month, when a score of words from him had not budged her an inch. Hi fists clenched tighter.

"Okay," whispered Serena's voice.

In the end, everyone came, gathering in Darien's living room, like flies alighting on carrion, he thought.

"Took a fall, did you?" said Lita to Rini when she arrived. "Karma for making Serena run after you, huh?"

Darien had sensed this wound earlier when they entered his apartment. Lips pursed, he withdrew the Golden Crystal. "C'mere, Rini."

The violence with which she shook her head blew tiny blades of air across the room.

"What?" he snapped, nettled by her refusal on top of everything else, including her constant references to him as 'that guy.' "Just come over here and I'll heal you!"

Reluctantly Rini stepped over to him. He touched the Golden Crystal to her jutted-out, scabbing chin – and gasps erupted all around from him. He heard Rini run back to Serena.

"_WHAT_?" he demanded for the fiftieth time that night.

"Aren't the sparks supposed to be _gold_?" said Asanuma.

"They weren't?" growled Darien.

There was a pause, as though they were all looking at each other and deciding what to say to placate the dragon. Darien's teeth gritted.

Asanuma said, "They were gold for a second, man, but then they turned white when Rini's scab healed over."

Darien turned his senses to Serena, who had not gasped along with everyone else. "Did that happen the first time? With the thorns in the park?"

Again, a pause before she answered. "Yes."

His confusion, like kerosene, ignited the annoyance already burning inside him into full-fledged anger. "And why didn't you say anything?" he snapped.

"Because you were already mad." Her voice, too, held a spark of ire. "And you were already convinced she wasn't human!" Her voice smoothed. "But now it makes sense."

"Pray tell, _how_," Darien gritted out. The soothing tone of her voice, her attempt to calm him down only whipped the flames of his irritation higher, for he could hear her own heart beating against her ribs like a caged bird. She was hiding something from him – she would not communicate with him with the rope – what had happened to their so recently recovered relationship?

As though she had heard his thoughts, she hesitated. The phantom tang of blood from the force with which she bit her lip touched his tongue in a burst of saltiness. Suddenly he was striding toward her.

He heard footsteps, rapid, almost lightning-fast, race in front of him, the thump of Lita's feet planting themselves firmly in the carpet. "I don't think so, _Your Highness_."

Darien's teeth clicked together. He stood his ground but did not move forward. He forced through the distraction fogging his mind and through the burning sensation in his eyes to focus. _Focus_! "You were saying, Odango?"

He felt her heart skip again. She said quickly, "It's for Rini to tell you." She took a deep breath. "But she's not going to tell you if you're about to jump down her throat, so calm down and let her talk."

Lita made a noise. "Hear, hear."

Darien shot her the nastiest glare in his armory. Then he directed his face toward Rini. "Well?"

He felt Serena bristle. Before she could say anything, he modified his tone to one of exaggerated courtesy. "I mean, Rini, what would you like to tell me?"

"I WOULDN'T like to tell you!" Rini heard herself burst out. Then she clamped down on her tongue and stared at him, horrified by how close to tears she sounded. Why was she so frightened? What did it matter to her? He didn't love her in the future, what did it matter if he did here, she didn't _need_ him – she didn't_ need_ ANYONE!

_Don't you_? said the ugly voice that lived at the back of her head. Images flashed before her eyes: Asanuma fighting in the wreckage of their house against Rubeus and the Four Sisters as he yelled at her to run; Sailor Moon saving her from her own father when he attacked her with vines when she first arrived in this godforsaken time; Sailor Moon saving her from the youma; Sailor Moon saving her from Prisma and the youma; Sailor Moon saving her from Catzi –

A hand squeezed her shoulder. The filmstrip of images in Rini's mind splintered as she started, looking up at Serena. The blonde was looking at her with concern, her forehead creased. It was a stupid look, one Serena wore often, because she was _stupid _– Rini's fists clenched again. Didn't Serena understand? Was she really so stupid that she didn't understand that once _he_ knew the truth, her chances with him would be over? Surely if she realized this she would not have insisted that Rini reveal the truth –

Serena's hand pushed the hair away from Rini's forehead, her palm pressed gently against it, checking for a fever. Rini's eyes fluttered closed for a second.

Then she sucked in a breath, opened them, and forced the truth out of her mouth.

There was silence in the room.

"A little louder," Serena whispered in her ear.

Rini felt as though there was lava squeezing out of her pores. Her whole body seemed mottled with heat. She stared hard at the floor and mumbled it again –

"I still can't hear you," Darien Shields said, shaking his head –

Rini shrieked, "I SAID, YOU'RE MY _**FATHER**_!"

…

The silence that had filled the room before was nothing compared to this. Rini stared at the floor, her chest heaving, and felt the colossal weight of the stares digging into her bent head. But she didn't care about them. Serena's fingers around her shoulder had grown as tight as a blood-pressure cuff, but she did not care about Serena's reaction either. It was _his_ that she wanted to know.

With a deep breath, she forced her eyes up from the carpet to look at Darien Shields – the man who would become her father.

His eyes blazed gold as they bored into her, making her ears buzz. It was by those eyes that she had known from the moment she saw him who he must be. In the few stories Asanuma had told her of her parents, he had mentioned her father's infamous golden eyes, relic of the Golden Crystal that claimed him as his guardian. Asanuma had never told her that her father had been blind, and Rini wondered now if that was because he really wasn't blind. The golden eyes that burned into her now did not seem as though they could not see her; they seemed instead as though they were analyzing her down to her very DNA.

The tense jut of his cheekbones and the tight line of her jaw told Rini exactly what his analysis sought to uncover. Even had she not realized, she would have figured it out when he turned his tangible gaze from her to the blonde sitting next to her. Rini felt something inside her break, crumble, and fall a long, long distance.

The unspoken question hung in the air like a foul miasma. She saw Darien's lips were tightly compressed, his nostrils flared; he would not ask it. Serena's face was white beneath the scars; she already knew the answer. Lita scowled in thought, looking back and forth between all of them. Motoki merely looked sick.

It was Asanuma who finally gave the question voice. Rini felt his eyes on her as he asked, "And who's your mom?"

Rini averted her eyes from Darien. She hated him, him and her mother both. But not so much that she could watch as the involuntary hope in his glowing eyes drowned and died.

Instead she looked at the carpet as she answered, "My mother is the moon princess."

She felt his reaction despite all her attempts not to. It saturated the air – every molecule of water vapor that clung to the air hissed and steamed; the wind howled outside the still-open doors to the balcony; the trees whipped and roared with their shaking leaves. Had she not been his daughter, she would not have been able to feel it like this, this caged animal rage that tore through him. But she was, and she did, and she looked steadily at the floor, her muscles tremoring as she felt the fury tear past and through her like a tsunami. She felt as though it would have ripped her away with it, if only Serena's hand had not been there on her shoulder, anchoring her down.

"THIS?" The word ripped from his mouth in a snarl. His eyes blazed. Poison coursed through his voice. "THIS is what I _deserved_ to know?"

His fury of his eyes sank into Rini like fangs. Her ears hurt from the shrieking of the wind outside, raging with its master. She cowered, hands over her ears. No one else could sense it, this ravaging of the elements – maybe Lita and Motoki could sense the electrons screaming across the clouds; maybe Asanuma sense the oxygen molecules racing, colliding, thrusting the temperature high and higher until the very air seemed as though it would combust, but that was all they could sense! Rini could sense them all! But even with their limited perceptions, what Lita and Motoki and Asanuma did sense was enough to turn them to stone as they watched her enraged father.

Only Serena, only stupid, giftless, Serena, without the ability to sense a single one of these things, was ignorant enough, was stupid enough, was wonderful enough to shoot to her feet in the heat of his wrath.

"Stop it!" She thrust her arms out beside her. "Stop talking before you say something you regret, Darien Shields! This is your _daughter_ – "

"Darien Shields?" Rini's father echoed. "_DARIEN_? Who's DARIEN? Obviously there IS no Darien! Obviously there's only Endymion, since the princess gets her fucking way after al – "

BAM!

Her father hit the wall so hard that the ceiling fan shook. He blinked his glowing eyes and looked up, his hand touching his face where Asanuma had punched it.

Asanuma lowered his fist. "Enough."

Darien looked at him. A tiny stream of red trickled down his lip. Gold sparks sailed out from his jaw like hissing, angry fireworks. His golden eyes flashed in concert. "You _dare_…"

"Yeah, I dare." Asanuma held out his hands at his side. His school uniform shimmered into his _gi_ and armor. "If you've got some anger to take out, then take it out on me. Do whatever the hell you want. But I'm not gonna let you keep saying stuff you're gonna regret in front of your own kid."

Rini watched, her mouth dry as bone. Her father could kill Asanuma. She knew that just from the pure power crashing off him in tidal waves. She saw the beads of sweat popping out on Asanuma's skin from the sheer pressure of his aura.

"Come on," Asanuma gritted out anyway. "Unless you're scared, _Darien_."

Darien jerked. Rini flinched. But he didn't lunge at Asanuma. Instead, she saw his hands curl, saw his shoulder blades jut and strain beneath his shirt – he spun.

His golden eyes swept over her, hot and prickling like swarming bees buzzing angrily over her skin. Then the hot gaze flicked to Serena, releasing her – there was a sound in the air like that of ripping cloth.

Darien shot out of the room in a blur of black. Rini barely glimpsed him bounding onto the balcony railing like a panther on all fours. What she did see, quite clearly, was the leap he took from the railing and how he hung in the air for a single, stabbing second – then disappeared.

Her stomach jumped into her mouth. If he died now, she wouldn't be born! Her body would disappear like it had never been here in the first place, and she would never ever see Asanuma ever again – _please, God, I don't wanna die, please_ –

"Elysion," said a voice beside her. She looked up, saw Serena with her eyes fastened on the spot where Darien had vanished. "He went to Elysion. It's okay, Rini. It's okay."

Rini didn't know what Elysion was. But Serena was saying it was okay, and she was kneeling in front of Rini and holding her hands tightly, and Rini was staring at her, and there were tears tracks running down Serena's scarred face, and she wanted to hate her but she couldn't feel anything but sadness for the ugly, scarred, idiot blonde girl who had been stupid enough to love her father and stupid enough to make Rini tell the secret that would keep her from ever getting to be with him and stupid enough to get herself killed someday and stupid enough to be telling Rini right now as Rini stood her thinking of how stupid Serena was that she was so proud, so proud of Rini and that she had been so brave…

Rini heard someone wailing. She looked around with her hot, blurring eyes and saw Lita and Motoki and Asanuma looking at her with pity in their eyes, and she realized that the wail was her own.

L

The time window depicting Endymion's apartment blurred, split, and multiplied itself into seven more windows.

A shrill scream split the air. "DAMN IT!"

Sailor Mercury sidestepped Sailor Pluto's staff as it shot past her to stab into one of the time windows.

"Goodness," she said, clasping her hands behind her back as she surveyed the new windows. "My, my. Well, this turn of events seems to render Uranus and Neptune's assignments rather superfluous… hmm? What's this?"

Pluto ignored Mercury, yanking her staff from the cracked time window. "How did the bastard child get through the time stream at all?" She watched fog seep from the cracks and seal them, then turned slightly to regard Mercury from the corner of her blood-red eyes.

Mercury continued her nonchalant inspection of the time windows without deigning to glance at Pluto. "Surely you do not suspect me, My Lady, when we both know that the only Senshi other than you who may enter the time plane without a key is Saturn."

"Who has not yet been reawakened," said Pluto coldly. "Unless my Icarus-imitating protégé has been acting without my permission?"

"My Lady, please do not insult me by comparing me to that Terran dunce." Mercury's eyes narrowed as she spoke, then she turned to Pluto with a smile. "How could a being as intelligent as myself make the blundering error of thinking herself equal to the task of managing a revived Sailor Saturn?"

"If only you could evade attacks as neatly as you evade my questions," said Pluto, "you might actually be a threat on the battlefield."

Mercury merely smiled and bowed her head in acquiescence.

Pluto seemed appeased by this submission. "I would have sensed Saturn's awakening," she said. "She has yet to be found… meaning that the child reached the past in some other way."

Mercury lifted her head slightly. "My Lady will recall that the prince escaped from the time realm with the princess using his own power."

"Undoubtedly leeching from our princess's power," said Pluto icily, her eyes flaring.

Mercury, her head still bowed, lifted a brow. Obediently she said, "Then perhaps as the daughter of the prince and Serenity, Rini would have been able to enter here herself."

"Perhaps, Mercury," said Pluto, her eyes narrowed at the use of the child's name.

"A fearsome power, indeed," murmured Mercury. "This is the reason that you and the High Senshi seek the child's death, My Lady?"

Pluto turned. A time-window floated silently out of the fog to hover before her. Pictured inside it was a dark room containing a dais and shadowy forms sitting behind it.

"It is the High Senshi's reason," said Pluto, watching the mirror intently. "But not mine."

L

The trip had been as long and strenuous as she remembered. No, even longer. On her trip out of the system, she had had planning and eagerness to shorten the light-years. Now, on her return trip, anxiety worried at each hour, unraveling each second into more like cloth unraveled into hundreds of threads.

_Come_, the message had said, _Now._ And that was all. No reasons, no elaboration. She had set off almost immediately, wary glancing over her shoulder at every moment. And now, when at last she was climbing the stretching marble steps into the temple, she found herself wishing that she was still traveling, or even all the way back on Terra.

Fewer guards manned the halls and doors than she remembered. Those that remained, lower-level Senshi in ornate, decorated fukus, watched her with flinty suspicious eyes. They saw her fuku, however, and did not stop her.

How long had it been since she had been transformed like this? Once, months ago, to enter Pluto's realm, and before that, years. She felt as though she had become lost in Pluto's realm and stumbled into the past. Walking through these familiar halls in her fuku made her feel small, inexperienced, and malleable.

Finally, the last set of doors loomed up before her. No guards stood before this set. Supposedly there had once been a pair, but that was in eons long past, eons even before the Terran Fall, and now only their auras remained, a faint nimbus around the doors, to prevent intruders' entrance.

The haze shimmered dimly as her boots clicked to a halt before the doors. Then the doors parted.

Breathing deeply, resettling her wings between her shoulder blades to hang at the angle indicating obedient respect, she strode into the center of the dim chamber.

The weight of dozens of eyes settled upon her. All movement, all sound, ceased. But she could sense all her fellow Senshi – their curiosity, their disapproval, their animosity – vibrating like electrons bound to a nucleus, buzzing to escape..

"Sailor Lanai."

She sank into a crouch, kneeling with one fist at her collarbone in allegiance, facing the dais raised slightly above the rest of the floor.

"High Council," she acknowledged, her eyes on the tip of her boot. "You have summoned me." It was not her place to question, not yet, although she burned with curiosity to find out the reason for her summons. Instead, she waited for their commands.

"What news have you to tell us of the Senshi Pluto?"

"None more recent than that which I have sent in my reports. As of my departure from Terra, her blocks on Serenity's Senshi remained solid. I have seen little apparent progress in dissolving the princess's memory block despite my efforts. I believe that Pluto was not bluffing when I encountered her during the battle with Metallia. She truly does not care about Chaos. She will not return Serenity's memories."

"Half a billion of us," muttered one of the High Senshi from somewhere to Lanai's left, "and not one but Pluto with the ability to manipulate memory! Has no one been found to circumvent the blocks?"

"If any existed, Pluto killed them," answered a quieter voice from Lanai's right. She would have foreseen their existence."

"Except the Golden Prince," said yet another Council member, a strange catch in her disembodied voice. "He still lives."

"Not for lack of trying," said a dry voice, coming from almost directly before Lanai. "Her first assassination attempt on him preceded even ours."

Several voices hissed angrily. Lanai had heard of the fury of the High Senshi who had attempted to kill Endymion's reincarnation when he was but a child and had not only failed but suffered horrible wounds in doing so when Endymion's soul inside the child reacted.

"Peace, my sisters." The dry voice from directly ahead spoke again. Lanai looked up to see a light-haired Senshi with a shining headdress leaning forward. "Senshi Lanai, what of Endymion?"

A silence even more profound than before pressed down on the chamber. Lanai licked her lips, uneasy. "What of him, Council Member?"

"The memory block that Pluto placed upon him. How has it fared?"

Lanai shifted her legs against the cold floor. "Endymion's reincarnation is…inscrutable. It is difficult to tell the state of his memory block. The Council knows from my reports that both Serenity and Endymion's reincarnations have shown strong attachment to each other from early in their acquaintance. Serenity has proved to be uncertain of that attachment, even more so because of the falsehood I fed her concerning her past relationship with Endymion. Thus I can be certain that her memory block is still in place. When Serenity avoided him because of what I told her, Endymion reciprocated by also avoiding her. Surely he would not do this if he remembered their past. Yet at the same time, his powers have grown exponentially and developed to levels that he should not have been able to reach without his memories of his education in the Silver Millennium. Serenity has not been able to develop to these levels without her memories."

"Yet… Serenity still lacks the Silver Crystal, while Endymion already has the Golden Crystal."

Lanai inclined her head. "This is true, Council."

Agitated murmurs, like hornets buzzing when their nest has been disturbed, filled the chamber. Then one of the council members spoke, and the murmur ceased.

"How far have Endymion's powers increased?"

Lanai thought of the auras that she had sensed flaring shortly before her departure. Serena had not told her, and there had been no time to pry the story from her before Lanai left…

"In addition to killing Kisenian Blossom and diverting a meteor from the planet," said Lanai, "I believe that two of Endymion's Shittenou had emerged as of my departure." She bit her lips, then said, "You also know from my report, High Council, that Endymion was also able to escape the time plane against Pluto's wishes."

She heard several sharp intakes of breath.

Lanai's curiosity was getting the best of her. She lifted her head. "If I may ask, Council, why was I summoned? All of these questions could have been answered – some have been – in my reports."

There was a short silence in which Lanai lowered her head again, perspiration beading on her forehead as she hung suspended in the sudden desperate wish that she had kept her mouth closed.

Then the light-haired council member in the middle of the dais spoke. "A troubling turn of events has arisen, Senshi Lanai, one that requires the utmost secrecy and security."

Lanai lifted her eyes to meet the Senshi's eyes.

The Council member stared back at her. "Several months ago, during a sweep of planets in search of a habitable place for refugees from the war, a planet was discovered. It appeared to have been half-pulverized by a blast of raw energy, and its atmosphere had been stripped away from all but its polar regions. The Senshi surveying it descended to the only landmass left unscathed by the destructive energy and found the remains of a primitive settlement in a group of caverns. She found fewer than a thousand bodies there, all perfectly preserved in the vacuum environment, along with paintings on the cavern walls. These paintings depicted a prosperous settlement that hunted and gathered, then the arrival of a man from a dark circle and surrounded by a yellow cloud. He is shown looking at small figures. Then the paintings show people dying, plants and animals dying, and people living in the caves. Then the paintings end."

The council member cleared her throat and pressed a finger to it, massaging her vocal cords. "The council thought little of the discovery at first, for the civilization appeared to be at least five hundred years old. However, a month ago, the Senshi Acheron returned from a sweep for refuge planets in the CoKu Tau system. Tau had not been heard from in over almost two decades, and we assumed that it had withdrawn in isolation to escape Chaos' attention. Hoping to persuade the Tauans to take refugees, we sent Senshi Acheron to speak with its leaders. Instead, she returned with news that the planet had been decimated. Over half of its atmosphere had been stripped away, and the force of the energy that had pulverized its southern hemisphere had pushed the planet into the gravity well of the Ku star. In less than ten years, Ku will swallow the planet."

The council member paused, closing her eyes for a moment. Then she reopened them. "Living in the remaining atmosphere was a surviving population of twenty thousand. Its leader told Senshi Acheron had come not from an army of Chaos but from a single man who appeared there out of thin air fifteen years ago. She said that he had golden eyes and that he sought a child. When he could not find the child, he grew angered, and there was a great flash of golden light. When the survivors awoke, their planet was nearly destroyed, and the man was gone."

Lanai was barely breathing, her knee trembling against the floor. In her mind floated the image of Darien Shields, his golden eyes burning with murderous fury as he told her to stay away from Serena. Was he capable of destroying entire planets? Yes. But…

"You have seen the seeds of this potential, have you not, Lanai?"

Lanai's head snapped up. She found the council member's eyes burning into hers.

"You know what Endymion's reincarnation is capable of," said the woman, watching her. "Traveling through time – even back five hundred years. Manipulating celestial objects." She paused. "Killing."

Lanai wet her lips. "Yes, but – " Distantly, she realized that she was about to contradict a High Council member. "Endymion's reincarnation though he may be, I have not seen in him the motivation to destroy whole planets for no reason – "

"But there is a reason!" The council member leaned forward over the dais, her brows furrowed beneath her tiara as she frowned down at Lanai. "We neglected to inform you of one detail, Senshi Lanai." She paused. "The destroyed planets reeked of Chaos aura."

"That – but that means – " Lanai broke off. Her blood had frozen to ice in her veins.

"It means," said the council member, "that at some point in the near future – or even as we speak – Endymion's reincarnation has given his soul to Chaos."

L

Helios was kneeling before the Elder Trees when a high-pitched keening split the still air. He spun, his wings shooting up in preparation for flight, just in time to see a grotesque creature hurtle from the sky to plow into the ground.

Helios's wings shot out, catapulting him into the air. He climbed nearly twenty feet before his wings stilled and stabilized to let him hover in the air. He hung there, suspended by his wings, torn between the inspecting the nightmarish thing so that he could describe it to Darien-sama and between flying far, far away from it.

A sense of duty nailed Helios in place; he stayed put, watching the chimeric being grovel in the dreamflowers. He winced as the claws on its furred black hindquarters shredded grass and dreamflowers. Its lashing black tail shredded even more of the flowers into pastel confetti that was sent whirling through the air by the flapping of the creature's clumsy wings, half-feather and half leathery brown membrane.

Helios flapped higher into the air when he saw those wings, but it was clear from the creature's writhing and violent snapping open and closed of the mutated things that it was having trouble taking flight.

Reassured, Helios dared to swoop closer, circling around to the front of the creature, taking in the leathery brown bat ears protruding from its black fur, the golden eyes glowing from beneath –

Helios's wings against his back in shock. He plummeted to the ground and landed hard, his knees slamming into the earth. He lurched forward even before he had finished landing, running to the hissing creature. "Darien-sama!"

Darien-sama's disfigured head whipped around. His golden eyes, set behind a whiskered snout, blazed out at Helios from above elongated canines dripping saliva. Then the snout melted into a snake's flat face with slitted nostrils, forked tongue, still set with golden eyes.

"Darien…sama…" Helios whispered, stopping dead in his tracks. There was no question, not with those eyes. This creature was Helios's master.

But…how? His mind raced. He had been warned, over a thousand years ago, while Endymion's king-father taught him the duties of Elysion's priest, of the possibility of such an occurrence as this. But that had been before Endymion-sama had learned to control the transformations. Helios had forgotten that this could happen; he had assumed that the ability of body-transformation would return to Endymion-sama's reincarnation easily and unconsciously, as his weaponry skills and elemental manipulation had. He had never dreamed that it would return in this way, in the way so dangerous that Helios's only instructions to deal with it had been to summon King-dono immediately to Endymion's side!

Helios's lungs felt as though they were filled with gravel. He tried to breathe, to think. What would King-dono have done if he was present? King-dono's abilities were the same as Endymion-sama's; would he have used the Golden Crystal? But the crystal only obeyed Endymion-sama! It would not obey Helios!

"Endym – Darien-sama," Helios whispered again to his snarling master. He licked his lips, trying to summon more moisture for his voice as he stared into Darien-sama's paralyzing glare – and then a thought more frightening than all the others hit him.

Suppose that _this_ was when _it_ happened? The swerve in Darien-sama's destiny, was it occurring at this very moment? Helios's body broke out in a cold sweat. He would fail his prince. He had heard it on the wind, the prophecy of his prince's fate veering into darkness – and it was because of now, because of this moment – because Helios would fail the master whom he had sworn to protect.

L

The sun had fallen. The night air gusting in had become cruelly cold, but no one suggested that someone close the glass doors to the balcony. There was the unspoken fear that if they shut the doors, Darien would never walk back through them.

Asanuma sat sprawled in the armchair, his eyes cat-like slits that glinted in the lamplight as he stared at nothing. Motoki had fallen asleep in the sofa, his fists curled tightly in his lap. Lita sat against the sofa beside him, her leg drawn up to her chest, her arm propped over her knee. She, too, stared into space.

Serena could see them all from beneath the tiny gap in her eyelids, sheltered by her eyelashes. She had pretended to nod off first, lulled by Rini's deep, steady breathing in her lap, because she did not want to endure the sympathetic looks that they would give her, the worried expressions that they would exchange above her head.

She wanted to sleep. But sleep was impossible. Impossible because even in sleep she would not be able to escape the reality of Darien's unbreakable bond with the princess; she would hear his voice calling for the princess and her Silver Crystal in her dreams. Impossible because even in sleep, she would feel Rini, his child and the moon princess's, as warm in her arms as a miniature Golden Crystal. Impossible because even in sleep she would be able to feel the rope like a noose around her neck, the choked, suffocating pain…

L

_**.**_

_** .**_

_** .**_

_'You must understand how famously strong the bond between the prince and princess was.'_

_**.**_

_** .**_

_** .**_

_'My mother is the moon princess.'_

_**.**_

_** .**_

_** .**_

_'You will find, in time, Darien-sama, that all paths lead back to her...'_

_**.**_

_** .**_

_** .**_

L

Serena jerked awake. Then she froze, angry with herself for revealing to the others that she was awake. Now Lita and Asanuma would try to talk to her…

Then Serena became aware of two things. First, she wasn't in Darien's living room. She was sitting, Rini still asleep in her lap, in a field of flowers and grass.

Second, roars and shouts filled the still air. And those shouts were a name. "Darien-sama! Darien-sama! _Darien-sama_!"

Serena grabbed Rini in her arms and spun around. Twenty meters away, she saw a white form in the air and a dark shape on the ground snapping at it. Spots of bright red blood stood out, even from a distance, on Helios's white clothing.

Serena took off running toward them. "Helios!"

Helios swung around in the air – and the dark shape lunged, closing its jaws around his ankle. Helios's wings beat, hard. Then he was dragged to the ground.

Serena transformed. Almost before her fuku had finished materializing, she had hurled her glowing tiara at the black form mauling Helios.

Then, in the split second between throwing the tiara and the end of her transformation, Sailor Moon made a horrible realization.

"Oh my Go – STOP!" she screamed. "_STOP_!"

The tiara combusted in midair, exploding in a shower of silver sparks. And the dark creature crouching over Helios lifted its monstrous head and looked at Sailor Moon.

Sailor Moon clutched Rini tighter to her. "Oh, my God," she whispered. "Oh, God. Darien." This was why the bond had felt like it was cutting her off. This was why –

Helios panted beneath Darien's panther claws. Slowly, an inch at a time, he began to slide from beneath them. But he need not have worried. The animal that was Darien took a step back, off of Helios, his claws shifting into hooves, his back into the mottled red and black of a tree frog, his ears into a dog's, flat and twitching against his head.

He took more lopsided, dragging limps backward. He stumbled like a newborn foal, his limbs shifting into something different with every step. Now hooves, now feet, now claws, now fins. The stumbling movement was pitiful to see, and Sailor Moon watched with a sick fascination until she realized that he had moved almost ten meters away – that he was trying to run from them!

"Darien," she whispered. This time he turned heel and broke into a run.

"Serena-dono," Helios panted, limping toward her. "This is another of Darien-sama's abilities! He can transform into any of Terra's creatures – but so many at once is dangerous! He cannot control it, his body is morphing too much, and he might – "

"Hold her!" Moon shoved Rini into Helios's arms and tore after Darien. He had a head start, but she had two normal legs and the fire of guilt burning at her heels. Even if he transformed into the fastest creature on earth, there was no cheetah alive that could outrun her, she told herself, not now, not when it was Darien in the balance.

Her stomach muscles screamed and tore as she poured on speed. Her heart shrieked and raged. If only she hadn't been so selfish! If only she hadn't scuttled into her own disappointment and bitterness to wallow when she realized who Rini's parents must be!

She had _completely_ ignored Darien's feelings – how furious and terrified he must be by the discovery that he had a child with the moon princess. To be struggling so hard against his prophesized destiny with the princess only to be met face-to-face with proof of his failure in that struggle – what had she expected him to do, pick Rini up and whirl her around in a hug? And it must have been a million times harder for him with both her and Asanuma both yelling at him, scolding him… Now that she knew to look for it, in her memory she could see his body convulsing, jerking as the animal transformation took him over.

She blinked sweat from her eyes and found that she had nearly closed the distance between them. But leathery brown wings were spreading from his back! The creature that was Darien was slowly but surely flapping into the air –

Where she couldn't follow. Just like with Yale, just like with his Golden Crystal powers, just like with the Moon Princess – he was always going somewhere that she couldn't follow. Why did she keep trying to keep up? Why did she keep running after him? Even when the universe, when the future, when he himself told her that she would never reach him! Why? Why?

_"Is it something you want to talk about? Or do you just need a shoulder?"_

_"You're not this carefree angel they can dump their own desire on, you're a person!"_

_"You think any of that's going to stop me from trying to protect you?"_

_"If you do got to hell… I'll come with you."_

Why?

She knew exactly why. There were a thousand reasons why, hundreds and hundreds of them cradled in her memory, precious as jewels. And yet not one of them made a white of difference! Not to the universe, not to the future, not to him.

_"You think any of that's going to stop me from trying to protect you?"_

But they made a difference to her.

Determination boiled through her, scalding. "GET DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT, DARIEN SHIELDS!" she hollered, scraping her throat raw. "IF YOU KILL YOURSELF BEFORE I GET THE CHANCE TO DO IT MYSELF, I'LL POST THESE PICTURES ASANUMA TOOK OF YOU ALL OVER THE INTERNET!"

He kept flapping. Moon watched, despair swelling again in her as she watched him swoop through the air as though he hadn't even heard her. Except – she squinted, glimpsing a glint of gold, and saw, atop his scaled lizard's head, a mop of blond curls.

Her eyes widened. An idea sprouted in her mind. A dangerous, risky idea, something to which the Moon Princess would never have resorted. But Serena was desperate.

She cupped her hands around her mouth, wishing fleetingly for her amplifying bun-barrettes. "RAT!" she yelled. "CAT! DOG! BOAR! SNAKE! SEAHORSE! RABBIT! COW, TIGER, RAM, HORSE!"

She fell silent, gasping for breath. Above her, Darien's body melted and formed into different parts so quickly that her stomach churned. Then his bat's wings were gone, replaced by the striped orange and black back of a tiger, and he was plummeting to the ground.

His chimeric body plunged into the grass with sickening crunches and lay still. Moon took a tentative step closer, eyes glued to his legs. All four of them. His front legs were the short, pawed legs of a dog, and a white bone protruded from glistening brown fur where the left leg bent. His back legs were the long, hoofed legs of a horse, both bent at unnatural angles, clearly broken.

His body twitched. He lurched forward on those trembling, mangled legs, trying to drag himself away from her. But the legs buckled almost instantly beneath him and he crashed back to the ground. He lay there, still and broken, like a child's abandoned action figure, his limbs askew and his golden eyes open, unblinking, and blank. There was no flash in his eyes, no change in his fur-covered, bewhiskered face as Moon sank to her knees in front of him.

Her stomach flipped faster and faster. Bile ate her throat. What if he was –

Then she saw them. Barely visible against the black fur covering his face, two dark trails streaking from his eyes to drip slowly onto the dreamflowers.

He was crying.

Serena went still. Darien had never cried in front of her before. Ever.

She swallowed, trying to wet her sandpapered throat. "Hey," she croaked.

She knew what to do when Shingo cried. Or Buji, or Rini. Or even Lita or Numa. But Darien...

_"Is it something you want to talk about? Or do you just need a shoulder?"_

She reached for him. Using her thumbs, carefully, she wiped the grass and dirt from his furry face. She lifted him, hooves and fur and tail and all, into her lap, cradling him against her shoulder. He snapped weakly at her, but she held his head tightly against her shoulder and rocked back and forth.

Slowly, he began to relax. His pointed, silky ears stopped twitching against her cheek. She kept rocking.

She would have liked to stay like that forever, she realized. Isolated in Elysion, where the Moon Princess couldn't find them, where youma couldn't find them, where she was the only one who could support Darien. But that wasn't fair. And most of all, it wasn't what was best for Darien.

"Okay," she said quietly. His ears twitched. She pressed his whiskered head against her collarbone. She inhaled, pushing herself into Lecturing Best Friend Mode. "Listen. You talk to me about getting into scrapes, Nerdboy, but look at you." She tugged gently on one of his whiskers. "How would you explain THIS to Dr. Tomoe?"

She felt a hiss building in his throat and squeezed him tighter. "See! Look at you! How are you supposed to control your powers if you can't control your emotions?"

Serena paused, suddenly realizing that it was entirely possible that Darien in this form could not understand her. Perhaps he had only been hissing because she had pulled his whisker.

Still… if he could understand her, she knew what he would say. "And how'd you get to be so knowledgeable about these things, Odango?" she said, deepening her voice. She grinned slightly despite herself. "That's what he would say."

She straightened, suddenly, and held the golden retriever-sized animal that was Darien out in front of her at arm's length. "Look here," she told him. "You're a logical person, Mr. Shields. So let's look at this froma logical point of view, okay? Yeah, I know, you're thinking that's going to be hard for me. So keep in mind that I'm going against my nature for YOU and try really hard to understand me. Okay? Good."

She paused and tried to organize her thoughts. "First and foremost," she began, "You've got friends who love you. Got it? We love you a LOT, and that's not going to change, no matter what you do."

He stared at her with slitted golden eyes. She stared back, trying to discern any comprehension. But even through the rope, he was a swirling mass of inscrutability. She gave up.

"Second. The Moon Princess." She chewed on her lip, thinking. "Okay, remember how when you and me first met, we kind of started off on the wrong foot? Since you called me an Odango Atama and I threw a shoe at you and all?" She cackled a little despite herself, then sobered hastily. "But look at us now! We're great friends! So it's probably the same with you and the princess! You've started off on the wrong feet with each other, what with you hating the fact that she shows up in your dreams asking – " _'Whining,'_ she could imagine him correcting her. " – for the silver crystal. But give her a second chance, like you gave me and like I gave you. After all, let's look at this sensibly now. Because you have the princess, you know that there's someone out there who loves _you_ more than anything else in the _world_! I mean – do you know what some people would give to have someone like that? Someone out there, waiting…just for them."

She fell silent, head drooping and bangs covering her eyes. Then she mustered a smile and looked up brightly. "You just have to look at it from a different perspective! Stop looking at your soulbond as being a cage and give the princess a chance. After all, Rini's a really sweet, kind kid – and she must have gotten those traits from her mother, because Lord knows she couldn't have gotten them from you, you Grumpy Bear!" she finished, giggling brightly.

A growl escaped his mouth in front of her. As she watched, his whiskered cat's muzzle elongated into the teeth-filled snout of a bear.

"Okay!" she said, hurriedly clapping her hands over his snout to hold it shut. He whuffled against her fingers, hot air seeping from his wet nose. "Not the kind of bear I was talking about! Um…" She bit her lip, staring into his eyes and trying to figure anything out. "Okay, um, let's try this. Let's just focus on one animal, huh? Oh, but wait," she said, thinking aloud. "Humans are animals, aren't they? So why can't you just turn back into you…? Oh!"

An idea had hit her again. She kept one hand over the-bear-rabbit-dog-ram-tiger-thing-that-was-Darien and reached the other to her brooch. Then she willed her detransformation to begin. As the magic began to unwrap from her fingertips, she felt the usual awareness of Darien flare at the edges of her consciousness. She tried to ignore it as she tied the ribbon of her unraveling magic to the string that connected their two consciousnesses, to give him privacy, but it spilled into her anyway; she tasted guilt, fear, sadness… but no longer any anger. Only unhappiness.

She pushed the feelings away before they could overwhelm her, too, and focused on the sensation of each bone, each muscle in her body as her transformation untwined from them. Skittishness and wariness entered his feelings, but the string to which she had attached her ribbon wrapped him like a mummy in her sensations of a human body.

Eventually she felt him begin to respond. The spectrum of violent colors in his mind dimmed; the sharpness of his almost painfully acute senses dulled; and last, his limbs lengthened. When Serena opened her eyes, her detransformation complete, it was a much taller, heavier Darien that she held propped up in her arms, the school pin on his blazer digging into her collarbone and his face smooth, furless, and whiskerless, where it pressed against her neck.

Relief poured through her. It was quickly chased from her veins, though, by an almost painful awareness of him. His breathing was slow and steady, the warm contact of his exhalations against the sensitive skin of her neck sending goose bumps across her skin.

"Um," she whispered, "Darien?"

After a brief pause, his head moved slightly, his lips brushing her collarbone. Serena froze. Every cell in her body felt as though it had a tiny flame burning inside it.

He fell still again, his breathing as slow as before. Serena went limp, the tiny flames extinguishing. He was asleep, thank goodness. She relaxed, though her back was beginning to hurt from holding him up. She shifted slightly, scooting backward so that she could lower his head into her lap.

Hopefully he hadn't been able to understand anything during the time he was…transformed. Or if he could, hopefully he wouldn't remember any of it. Serena shuddered now at the realization of how painfully transparent she had been. _"Do you know what some people would give to have someone like that? Someone out there, waiting – just for them_."

Her hair fell over him, as she leaned over to push his overgrown bangs from his face, and her fingers faltered. He was asleep. No one else was here. How easy would it be to kiss him? No one would ever know. It was like a scene from a manga, her hair falling down around the unconscious prince…

Except that she wasn't a princess. Her hand fell to her side, and she clenched it in her hair. As she dug her fingers through the soft, tangled mess, a memory seized her.

_She looked at him in annoyance at his lack of attention and saw that he was twirling some of her hair in his fingers._

_"Who said you could play with that?" she demanded. "Don't touch it, who knows how long it's been since it was washed – "_

_"You've got so much hair that oils can only reach what, the top half of it?" he cut her off. "Besides, don't bother me, I'm enjoying it."_

_"I hope the irony doesn't escape you," she said. "The hair you're deriving such pleasure from right now is the same hair you always ridicule so much."_

_"Oh, the irony just makes it more fun." He closed his eyes. "You talk more like me these days, Odango."_

_"Do I?" She frowned. She replayed her words in her head. "What, just because I use big words I'm imitating you? In that case, YOU talk more like ME lately."_

_"Meaning I use smaller words and make less sense," he muttered._

_"Let's remember whose hair it is you're playing with right now," Serena reminded him pointedly._

_"Mine," said Darien slyly. "I made it grow, remember?"_

Her lip trembled. She hadn't even realized how she felt about Darien then. She had been so stupid. And she was still stupid, because now she knew for sure that she would never be with him, and she STILL hadn't given up on him.

Yet it was imperative that she did. Her crush wasn't just that of an innocent school girl. Her feelings for Darien created pain for more than just herself. Miss Lanai had told her what those feelings had caused in the past. And now she saw the kiss between herself and Darien that Rini had witnessed through new eyes; the child had seen her father kissing someone who wasn't her mother! Her eyelids fluttered shut tight with guilt.

She would stop now. This time she meant it. Really, really meant it. She remembered Haruka Tennou, the kindness with which he treated her, his sly jokes, and the way he stood so close to her. She would get to know him better. She would ask him to the movies. They would start dating, and maybe she would find that she loved him, a peaceful, painless love.

And yet… Her lips pressed together. She opened her eyes to look down at Darien's face, creased, probably by dreams. She smoothed the crease from his forehead with a gentle hand. It seemed so empty to seal away and cut off your love for someone without ever even having told them that you loved them. As though your feelings had never even existed in the first place.

Her lips parted. She glanced around the deserted, empty expanse of flowers, then at Darien's relaxed, sleeping face. She squeezed her eyes shut tight, leaning closer, and tried to picture in her mind the way that she would have confessed if a million other things had not gotten in the way.

"Um," she began, but her voice was a rasp. She swallowed and began again. "Darien. We've…well, we've been friends for a really long time. Kind of. Well, only about a year, really, but it feels like forever. I can't really remember what life was like before I met you. Kind of lonely, I guess. No one could ever tell when my smiles were fake until you came along. Even before we became friends, you knew me better than I knew me."

She laughed a little, then sobered. "Even when the Senshi thought I was working with the Dark Kingdom, you were there for me, and… and you always make me feel better when I'm sad. Or even happier when I'm already happy. So… so…"

Serena inhaled deeply. "I just wanted you to know that… I love you."

She stopped, swallowing and clasping her hands tightly. If this had been for real, she would have said next, _'And I wanted to see if you felt the same way.'_

But she already knew the answer to that question, so all she said was, "And…that's all."

Serena felt very stupid, suddenly. She lowered her chin to her chest, staring at her hands and trying to think of Haruka-san and how very nice and funny he was, even if he didn't have Darien's dry voice or no-nonsense attitude… and she didn't see Darien's lips curve into a smile below her.

L

A/N: I USED "WHUFFLE!" !!

Also – lots of italics this chapter. Sorry.

ALSO – Pleeeeeeeeeeaaase review before you move to the next chapter. This was a REALLY BIG fat hinge in the story; I NEED INPUT ON IT.


	20. Chapter 20

Agent: AZ'HURI, RIBARR

A/N: I really need to find some decent happy music. My Chemical Romance and (strangely enough) the Bee Gees catapult the characters straight into Angstland.

Also – does anyone know what's happened to Nimbirosa and Wren Truesong? I really miss their fic _Kakera_.

ALSO – as always, I owe gratitude to many people. Jade-eye for putting up with me and posting despite her SUPER busy life and all you wonderful reviewers for putting up with ridiculously infrequent updates.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon. Or Fruits Basket, Naruto, Cardcaptor Sakura, Inuyasha, LaLa, or Nakayoshi. Don't worry, I haven't gone crossover on you. It'll make sense.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Twenty: Prevention

L

_"Helios." A warm hand settled upon his head._

_Helios looked up, tilting his head back to smile up. His smile faded as he saw the grim expression on his master's face. "King-dono?"_

_Abruptly, the grimace on King-dono's face became a smile. But Helios was old enough by now to realize that the shift in expression was only a mask that King-dono donned to soothe the fear on Helios's face._

_Helios tried to school his face so that King-dono would not have to feign for him, so that he could be not a burden on King-dono but instead a pillar of strength, as Malachite and Nephrite and Zoicite were._

_As always, King-dono sensed his thoughts, for he said, "You are you, Helios."_

_Helios averted his face. The motion twisted his unicorn's horn between the king's fingers. He felt shame._

_King-dono sensed this emotion as well. "Your alternate form is not deserving of shame, Helios. It makes you more. Not less. Can Nephrite fly, or Zoicite? They envy your abilities as you envy theirs." He paused and tapped the horn that protruded from Helios's head. "And it is this golden horn that marks you as an Elysian priest. It is how we discovered you."_

_Helios shook his head. "His Majesty did not come to soothe my insecurities. Please – "_

_"Nevertheless I shall." King-dono's hand fell from Helios's hand to his shoulders, his long fingers just above the joints in Helios's back where his wings protruded from his back. "A man rich in power and poor in certainty hurts not only himself but others as well."_

_Now Helios felt even more shame. For wasting King-dono's precious time, for revealing his weakness to King-dono, for being so weak at all._

_"It is not only you of whom I speak, Helios. I fear for my son."_

_Helios's gaze snapped up. King-dono, afraid? Surely not._

_"Yes, Helios. I perhaps more than anyone." As always King-dono had sensed his unspoken thoughts. "You know that your predecessor left us with an ominous prophecy."_

_"That one being in all time would be able to conquer Chaos." Helios nodded his head, his uncertainty forgotten. "I remember, King-dono." _

_How could he forget? It was King-dono's fear that his son was the subject of the prophecy that had caused the panicked scramble to find Elysion's next priest – to find Helios. _

_He hesitated, the weight of King-dono's hand atop his young head almost too much to bear. "Have you discovered that the prophecy spoke of Endymion-sama?"_

_King-dono's hand twitched upon Helios's head and pulled away. Cold entered Helios._

_"Why?" said King-dono. His voice was tight as a tourniquet. "Have you heard something?"_

_Helios shook his head. "No, King-dono! I have heard nothing! Only…only…"_

_"Yes?"_

_Helios shook his head once again. "It makes no sense, King-dono, for the Moon Queen has no children – "_

_King-dono's hand rose to Helios's shoulder and gripped it almost painfully. "She is with child. A daughter."_

_"Then…King-dono, then…" Helios stared up into his liege's gold-flecked eyes. "I think…she is the one."_

_King-dono's grip tightened even further. "I feared as much." _

_Abruptly, he released Helios. "I must lay another task upon your shoulders, Helios. I need you to listen, with every fiber of your ability, for any news of outsiders entering our system."_

_"Chaos forces, Your Majesty?" asked Helios, torn between feeling pride at King-dono's entrusting of a task to him and feeling apprehension at the grim tone in King-dono's voice._

_"Chaos forces, yes." The king nodded, his eyes already sliding away from Helios to gaze into an unseeable distance. "But we will detect those. I am relying upon you to watch out for High Senshi."_

_Helios blinked and frowned. The High Senshi could surely have no affect on Terra, whose King-dono was so strong that it did not need a Senshi. _

_"Why should we fear them, King-dono? If they come, it is surely only to take the princess for training. They have no business with us."_

_King-dono's eyes flashed once, a bright gold. Helios recognized the meaning of the flash; something in the outside world demanded King-dono's attention. He squeezed Helios's shoulder, smiled tightly, and vanished from Elysion._

_Helios never saw King-dono again._

L

So she had restored him to his true form.

Helios stood at the crest of the last hill, having finally found his master, human-shaped and slumbering in the lap of an also slumbering Serena.

The sight of the golden-haired woman curdled the relief in Helios's veins to bitterness. Sailor Moon, who was possibly one of the High Senshi against whom King-dono had warned him, had been able to guide his prince back to his human form, while Helios, who had been trained by King-dono himself, had been useless. Even the passage of a millennium had not changed his weakness.

His knees had sunk into the grass without him realizing it. Now he struggled back to his feet. It was possible, he told himself, no, even _probable,_ that the inner turmoil that had taken over Darien-sama's body had been caused by Serena in the first place. If so – and it probably was so, he thought unhappily, thinking of the extraordinary influence that she wielded over Darien-sama's emotions – then it was reasonable and meaningless that she had been able to dispel his internal chaos and restore his form.

It was also entirely possible that this had been Serena's purpose – to seduce Darien-sama and fill him with uncertainty, with conflict – to render him helpless by entrapping him in a cage of his own powers. If she was a High Senshi…

An even more troubling thought unveiled itself to Helios. Only one thing impacted Darien strongly enough to drive him down the path that the wind had whispered he would, and that thing was Serena.

The realization intensified his uneasiness. The possibility – the _probability _– of Serena's threat stood before them as bright and clear as a full moon, but Darien-sama would never listen to a word against Serena. Should Helios give voice to his warnings at all, they would antagonize Darien-sama, and he would refuse to listen to anything that Helios said in the future, Serena-related or not.

Helios could not – indeed, the _planet_ could not – afford that kind of alienation. But some precaution had to be taken, no matter how small in degree. Especially when… he looked down at the brown-haired child in his arms.

His stomach roiled with apprehension; he set her down carefully upon the grass. Then he half trotted, half floated cautiously the rest of the distance down the hill to where his master and Serena slept.

Before doing anything else he eyed the woman carefully. She appeared to be deep in sleep although she was sitting upright. Her body leaned precariously forward over his master, her chin pressed to her chest. Her long gold hair rippled out around her like sunlight spun into silk, and Helios narrowed his eyes, wondering if she ever wore it up when she was not transformed. In all of his admittedly few encounters with her, she had worn it down, like an immodest maiden…or a seductress. Her hair alone could bewitch a man, and from the way that Darien-sama's fingers now, even in sleep, had loosely twined themselves in the golden curls, Helios could see that he had been bewitched. His lips compressed. He stared at Darien-sama's fingers in Serena's hair, as though he could separate them by will –

Helios's eyes snapped away from Darien's fingers to the hand that suddenly grasped his elbow. He followed the hand up its sinewy arm to the golden eyes fastened upon him.

The almost contemptuous dispassion of Darien-sama's gaze as he lounged with his head cradled in Serena's lap, curtained by her hair, was so identical to that of Helios's dead prince that he breathed, "Endymion-sama."

L

Darien had never been hung-over before, but Motoki, who had, had described the sensation to him and Asanuma. His description matched the way he currently felt. Nausea clotted his insides like chunks of vomit, and his skin felt scaly and too tight in some places, too loose in others. His head throbbed as though a dinosaur's heart had been squeezed into his skull and was pulsing there angrily.

And now Helios was looking at him, saying something. And he wore his usual tiresome expression of alarm and warning, as though the world was about to end in the next hour and Darien should be doing something to stop it, why wasn't he doing something to stop it?

Darien did not want to worry about the world or anything else. Only moments ago he had drifted in warm, pitch-black sleep. He had not ached or bled or screamed – only drifted peacefully and listen to someone's voice saying… His fingers curled more tightly around the softness. What had she been saying?

"Darien-sama! I apologize!"

His eyes drifted back to Helios, hazily annoyed. He had been trying to remember…

"Forgive me, I did not mean to call you Endymion-sama." The priest's head was bowed but lifted briefly to dart a glance up at Darien. "It is imperative that I speak with you, Darien -sama."

Darien continued to curl his fingers in the softness and to watch the light arcing across the horn that protruded from Helios's pearlescent hair. "Nothing is stopping you."

Helios's head lifted again, and this time his eyes went above Darien. "Alone, Darien-sama."

Alone? Still entwining his fingers in the softness, he glanced up.

"Odango," he murmured, realizing now why not just his body but his soul seemed loathe to move. He sat up, reluctantly, withdrawing his hands from her hair. The curls clung to his fingers as though they were fingers themselves, and he unwound them as carefully as one would disengage one's hand from a sleeping child's head.

Then he pulled her backward out of her leaning position to lie against him. Holding her head carefully against his collarbone with his chin, he swept her long hair out into both of their laps and began to braid it.

"It is a sensitive matter, Darien-sama."

He felt as though it had been a very long time since he had seen Serena's hair with his own eyes. The lighter, almost white strands hid among the gold ones, the almost living burnish made by the light bouncing off waves of curls in her tresses, and especially the way that the strands wrapped insistently around his fingers – he saw no reason to deprive himself of these sights. So he answered Helios without looking up from braiding Serena's hair:

"She's sleeping. She's not listening to you."

He heard Helios's nearly audible sigh – and his sudden pulse of shock when Darien pulled the last of her hair away from her face.

"I – " began Helios.

"Forgot about them," Darien finished for him, his own chest constricting at the sight of the silver scars that still gouged her face. He finished braiding her hair; as he held the end of it in his hands, a long-stemmed rose appeared between his teeth. He used it to fasten the braid.

The completion of this small act for Serena freed some part within him; he suddenly felt much clearer and less foggy. The antagonism simmering in Helios toward the treasure in his arms was easy to discern.

"She hasn't forgotten them," said Darien coldly. "Don't stare at them if you can't even both to remember that she made that sacrifice to save your precious planet from Beryl."

Helios mirrored Darien's transformation; his expression went studiously blank as he regarded Darien. "Do you remember what happened yesterday?"

Darien's eyes narrowed as he stared at Helios…

"_I said, you're my father!_"

The sour scent of all their bodies breaking out into cold sweat.

The deafening pounds of shocked hearts beating tattoos.

"_My mother is the moon princess._"

His heart stopping cold.

His bones groaning under his skin as rage melted them, saliva dripping hot like blood from jaws that wanted to tear at something – anything – white fabric and white skin ripping with a gush of red and running burning shame Serena…

Scolding him.

Holding him.

His arms tightened around her shoulders mechanically. "Helios, your leg – I'm sorry to have forgotten. I'm sorry for forgetting, for attacking you – "

"You think I'm dwelling on that!" Disbelief and anger lanced through Helios's voice. "Your Highness, I am not that type of man, to count my hurts and to present them to you like a list of debts! Perhaps if you spent more time in Elysion learning to take care of your planet, you would know me better than that!"

Darien jolted at the title 'Your Highness.' But awareness that he was indeed in the wrong seeped through him, thick and hot as tomato soup. Had he spent more time here, training and learning with Helios, he would not have lost control the way that he had last night. What if he had transformed into a beast in his apartment and not in Elysion? He could have attacked his friends, Serena, or even…his own child.

"You're right, Helios." His voice was a whisper. He was the prince and guardian of the planet, like it or not. His life had never been his own; the time had come to stop bemoaning that fact and shoulder its weight instead of letting himself and the ones he loved be crushed by it.

"Nevertheless." He lifted his face, rigid with determination, to look at Helios. "I owed you an apology. Do you need me to heal the wounds?"

Helios examined his expression silently, then shook his head. "There is no need. I heal quickly in Elysion's air. Moreover, I have far graver news to share with you than that of mere injuries, Darien-san."

Darien noticed the change from "sama" to "san" and accepted it for the scolding it was. He also felt surprise at Helios's unprecedented divergence from submissive deference. That surprise was quickly eclipsed, however, by the apprehension that he sensed swelling within Helios. His eyes narrowed reflexively as he stared into Helios's nearly colorless eyes…

"This news wouldn't have anything to do with why you haven't come within a meter of me lately, would it?" he said slowly.

Helios's wings stiffened with an audible rustle. "Yes." Darien watched him slowly and deliberately closed his eyes. "Before I explain, Darien-san, please tell me – have people around you seemed unusually…_compliant_ with your requests as of late?"

Darien stared at the spider web of faint blue veins visible beneath Helios's eyelids, his chin digging into Serena's head. "You mean, have I hypnotized anyone lately?" he said at last. Then he answered without waiting for a response. "Yes. Another ability of the Golden Crystal, I presume?"

Helios's eyes remained closed – he didn't want him to read his mind through them, Darien realized, recalling the way he had discerned Helios's surprise at Serena's scars before – then began to speak.

"You were very incensed with me the day that I warned you to be alert for High Senshi in the system, for Serena's sake if not for the princess's," he said.

Incensed was an understatement, but Darien nodded; he remembered the day clearly.

"After you left that afternoon," Helios continued, as though he knew despite having his eyes closed that Darien had nodded, "there was a wind through the trees such as I have not heard since the fall of the Silver Millennium was prophesized. This wind foretold that…"

Helios's voice fell to a halt. He opened his colorless eyes. And Darien read the rest of his sentence in them even as Helios spoke it aloud.

"The Terran prince welcomes Chaos…and becomes one of its warriors."

L

Sailor Mercury's brows rose as two of the time windows in front of her vanished. Then a row of ten more windows sprang up to take their place.

"Oh, my," she murmured with a sly smile. She erased it quickly from her face and called, "My Lady Pluto!"

The fog behind her thickened and swirled into a woman's shape. The fog parted, and Sailor Pluto stepped out of it, lips pursed. "Have you found her?"

"No." Mercury resisted the urge to tell Pluto yet again that she would not be able to locate Saturn's reincarnation by searching the time windows. The older Senshi had not listened the first seventeen times. "But something equally important, perhaps."

She stepped sideways, allowing Pluto to view the row of possible futures now unfolding.

"Something has changed." Pluto gave voice to the obvious, her voice flat.

"Yes," said Mercury. "Apparently I was too hasty in dismissing Uranus and Neptune's efforts as unneeded. It appears that they will, in fact, be needed to act a tad more…hmm, what's the connotation I'm looking for? _Zealously_."

"Apparently." Pluto continued to study the windows. She lifted her staff to tap one of them. Its interior swirled in a maelstrom of color and flashed to a different scene.

Mercury stepped deliberately in front of the time-window at the end of the line, placing herself in Pluto's line of vision. "Yet that will force them to leave Mars' reincarnation unattended."

"Dangerous," murmured Pluto, now tapping the next time-window in the line and watching its contents.

"So…" Mercury carefully injected the precise amount of youthful eagerness into her voice, a child begging Mommy for a pet. "Can I have her? Please, Pluto, _please_?"

Pluto glanced up from the time-window. She stared at Mercury, pursing her lips, for a moment. Mercury kept the innocently eager expression frozen on her face as only a Senshi of ice could.

"There will be no experimentation," said Pluto at last. "No…conditioning or…modification. One Tomoe is enough."

Mercury almost flinched. She quickly hid it, lifting a finger to rub the side of her nose as though it scratched.

"You will guide her focus to find Saturn, and that is all. Am I clear?"

Mercury grinned, not as much from Pluto's assent as from her astounding ignorance. _The imperceptive imbecile!_

Aloud, she said, "As clear as crystallized helium, My Lady!" Slowly, she back into the fog, the time window behind her bumping gently against her back like a balloon. "Will you retrieve her, or shall I?"

"I will," decided Pluto. "I do not wish for Uranus and Neptune to be aware of you yet."

Mercury's answering grin was as dazzling as sunlight bouncing off snow. "I do adore being a secret weapon."

L

Welcome – _Chaos_? And become one of its _warriors_?

As the words echoed in Darien's skull, he felt that groaning in his bones again. He looked down and saw his white-knuckled fist clenched on his knee.

Clenching…and melting. Growing ridges, sprouting black fur and sharp black claws. Panic seized him.

Hot liquid raced down his lip. Against his gums, his teeth stretched and slid and sliced into the tender pink gum tissue. He twisted his head hastily to the side, eyes wide, trying to keep the blood running down his chin from dripping onto Serena's head.

A whine escaped his throat. It was a puppy's whine, frightened and helpless. He _would _end up being taken over by Chaos, he couldn't control anything, not even his own body –

_"See! Look at you! How are you supposed to handle your powers if you can't control your emotions?"_

"Darien? Darien!"

Hands seized his face; it was wrenched downward, and he snarled. Blue eyes stared into his, and then worry's salty flavor filled his mouth. It was the unmistakable taste of Serena, and suddenly he felt their rope wrapping around his face and hands like a long roll of bandages. Felt smooth fragile limbs in gloves, dull fingertips pressing at the material, square small jaw and small teeth and small tongue…

He opened his eyes.

Serena's blue ones were centimeters away from his own, and for a moment, they just stared at each other, him dumbly, her angrily.

Then she emitted a sound of rage and squashed her hands against his cheeks, mashing his face into a fish-lipped shape.

"I leave you alone for ONE NAP, and you're suddenly all Werewolf Boy AGAIN?"

Her mashing of his face had smushed his eyelids half shut. He squinted at her wordlessly through them.

Helios's voice punctured their little bubble. "Serena-san, if you would please…"

Hastily, Serena – no, she had transformed into Sailor Moon – pulled her face away from Darien's and rocked back on her heels. She was still in his lap, though, they realized simultaneously, and she scuttled hastily out of it.

Darien stared at her flushing face for a tortured moment.

_"…welcome Chaos…"_

Still watching her watch him, he rose into a crouch. He placed his head closer to Helios and spoke directly into the priest's ear, his lips barely moving.

"Are these prophecies always fulfilled?"

He waited, barely breathing, for Helios's answer, which took far too long to arrive. At last, the priest murmured into Darien's ear, "Prophecies exist in order to prevent their own fulfillment."

It was like a line out of a textbook, an answer a teacher gives when he doesn't know or doesn't wish to tell the answer to a question. Darien's stomach began to wring.

"Please forgive me, Darien-san." Helios's whispered words flowed swiftly, like a river bubbling over rocks. "I thought this prophecy something of which you should be aware. Chaos sent Kisenian Blossom in an attempt to be rid of the threat that you pose only if Kisenian Blossom could not control you to turn your power to Chaos's own purposes. But Chaos has other methods, far subtler than ever Kisenian Blossom, far more insidious. They will come at you from the outside, from the inside, without even your being aware of their presence. And Chaos is not the only threat to you by far…"

Darien was trying very hard to listen intently. But despite his effort, he felt Helios's words entering one ear and tumbling out the other without making an impression upon his mind; it had become stone, frozen by the realization of what he had become.

Not of what he _would_ become but of what he already _was_.

He had attacked Asanuma with murderous intent, as though he was his enemy instead of his best friend. Not even just once, but several times over. He had kissed Serena without it even occurring to him to think of whether she would want him to kiss her, or how guilty it might make her feel. He had ordered Helios around as though he was a slave and not a fellow human being, and then he had attacked him. He had cussed about a woman in front of her six year-old child.

He might as well already be one of Chaos's warriors.

"What can I do?" He struggled to keep his voice low enough that Moon would not hear. It cracked as he spoke. "Helios, how can I stop it?"

Helios's pale eyes stared into Darien's as though searching for some sign within them. His lips compressed; he rocked back on his haunches minutely.

"All I can tell you, Darien-san," he said at a normal volume, standing, "is to find the other Shittenou."

This succinct and apparently irrelevant answer lit Darien's ire; he glared at Helios. Then he realized himself and quickly smothered the emotion. Anger was no good. Anger was what had caused him to act so abominably; anger would lead him to fulfill the prophecy. He had to be peaceful, not angry. He inhaled deeply through his nose. Peaceful.

He stood, forcing his fists to unclench. "Thank you, Helios."

Sailor Moon still had her eyes fastened carefully to the ground. "Can I come back now?"

Darien tried to look at her without _looking_ at her. She would never be his. Ever. He could not be angry at that fact – he inhaled deeply – he could not be angry at that fact…

"Yes," said Helios. "My apologies, Serena-san."

"Yeah." Darien unlocked his jaw. "Sorry about that. And thanks. For, uh…"

He gestured down at himself and tried to push from his mind the memory of her limbs as she transformed, the smooth human arms hugged by her gloves, the slender legs encased by her boots…

"…helping me back to normal," he managed to finish.

"No problem!" She smiled brightly but briefly at him, then turned to Helios. "I'm sorry, Helios-san, but please, where's the little girl I came with?"

Darien's eyes widened. "_Rini_?"

"Yes, she was with me," replied Moon distractedly, still looking at Helios. "When I came, I mean – Helios-san, it's very important – "

"She sleeps yet," said Helios, his own brow furrowing as he began to walk up the hill. "I shall take you to her. On that subject, I have my own question." He looked steadily at Darien. "When you told me about the child, you failed to tell me that she was _yours_."

Already Darien's gums were beginning to throb, as though his teeth were beginning to elongate. He clenched his jaw, concentrated on the memory of Serena's small, flat teeth – no, that didn't help the primal feelings rushing through him at all – he concentrated on his own teeth, memories of trips to the dentist's office.

When he felt himself calm enough, he said, "That's because I only became aware of that fact yesterday."

"You spent all that time with her without noticing that she was your daughter," Helios said flatly.

"Helios, I'm seventeen. Her being my daughter wasn't a possibility that occurred to me. Especially considering that I've never – "

He broke off, feeling his face color. "That I haven't even met her mother yet," he modified, looking anywhere but at Sailor Moon.

But Helios's eyes flicked immediately to Sailor Moon. "You have not?"

Darien saw where Helios's eyes were and scowled more deeply – then inhaled deeply and ironed the glower from his face.

"No. Not if she's telling the truth, at least. She says that her mother is the Moon Princess."

Helios relaxed visibly. "Ah."

"Well, if you're through jumping to conclusions," said Darien as not-sourly as he could. "Can we get Rini?"

"Yes, please," said Moon, also still a little pink, probably pretending that she hadn't heard the last few minutes of conversation. "She'll probably be scared if she wakes up here all alone – "

"Here." Helios stopped walking.

Sailor Moon bumped into Darien from the abruptness of the stop, but Darien barely noticed. He hung back as Moon fell to her knees beside the sleeping girl in the grass, realizing that this was his first time to actually _see_ her.

Her hair was spiky like his, but brown. The color of coffee with creamer. She wore the sailor-styled red Juuban Primary uniform jumper, starched within an inch of its life and its bow primly tied to be perfectly symmetrical, but she seemed extraordinarily small to him even for a kindergartener, skinny and sharp-elbowed, sharp-kneed, sharp-cheeked – sharp-tongued, too, he thought distantly.

Unconsciously he crept closer, crouching down beside Serena.

She looked unbearably familiar, he realized, his eyes tracing her long black lashes and cheekbones and the tiny frown that creased her face even in sleep. And she curled her tiny fist at her cheek while she slept the same way that Serena did.

"Helios-san."

Moon's fear-tinted voice startled Darien from his intent examination; his eyes snapped up. He felt almost relieved by the distraction: a strange sensation had begun to fill his chest, swelling there like a balloon, and it unnerved him.

"Why isn't she awake?" Moon asked, still holding Rini's shoulders from where she had tried to shake her awake. "What's wrong? Is she okay?"

Helios sighed. "There has never been a union between the Golden and Silver Crystals' bearers before. The abilities of the product of this combination are extremely unpredictable and could cause any number of variations from what is usual. Part of the reason that the Moon and Earth were kept apart was because of the fear of the powers that any child of the Golden and Silver Crystals would possess. In fact, the High Senshi – "

He broke off, and Darien didn't miss the glance he shot at Sailor Moon.

"You said before that a group of youma from the future are chasing her?" he said to Darien, deftly changing the subject.

"The Black Moon," Moon answered before Darien could speak. "And she does have powers, she transformed into a flower so that the youma wouldn't catch her. But Helios-san, that doesn't answer the question – why isn't she waking up?"

"It is a rare person who is able to stay awake in Elysion without the Golden Crystal." Helios pinned her with a pointed stare. "This is the realm of dreams, after all. It is possible that her power has not yet reached the level of power that would allow her to remain awake. Or perhaps she wishes to remain asleep. The possibilities are myriad."

"So…she'll wake up when we're back in the real world?" Moon lifted Rini into her arms carefully, darting challenging glances at both of them as if she was not sure that they would contest her right to do so. A dart of pain lanced through Darien's heart. If only –

"I see no reason why not," said Helios. "It is unfortunate, though…I would have liked to speak to her. I assume that you were not the one to teach her how to transform, Darien-san?"

"What part of I only found out she was my daughter yesterday doesn't make sense to you?"

Helios ignored him. "I thought not."

Darien sighed again. How had he not noticed before how often he become angry? "Sorry, Helios," he muttered.

"Thank you, Darien-san." Helios inclined his head, his eyes still on Rini in Moon's arms. "I request that you come back at least once a week to keep me updated, especially about the little princess."

"More often," said Darien, thinking of the prophecy and his need to control his powers. There would be no encore performances of the day before. Ever. "Do you think she would be able to tell us about how she came back in time?"

"Perhaps." Helios's eyes clouded with thought. A thought seemed to occur to him; the haziness of his eyes sharpened. But as Darien watched him shoot a glance at Sailor Moon, he knew that the priest would not reveal that thought while she was present. He forced down yet more annoyance.

"Until then, Darien-san," Helios reclaimed his attention, "remember what I said. Find the Shittenou. They will help you to keep your daughter safe. And…" he pursed his lips, staring at Rini once more. "Please find the princess, Darien-san. No child should have to live without a mother."

The anger and hurt that stabbed through Darien were so sharp that he sucked in a breath. He stared at Helios, feeling the skin tightening around his eyes – then a warm weight pushed into his hand.

His eyes flicked to his hand and the small gloved fingers in it, then up to Serena's face. Comfort glowed quietly there like embers, pushing away the icy emotions that frosted his insides. Looking into her eyes he remembered that not an hour ago those arms that were now holding Rini had not an hour ago been holding him, too, cradling him close.

At the back of his mind a memory fluttered like a bird too weak to take flight. _You always make me feel better when I'm sad…_ He froze, seeking for the rest of the memory, but it sank as though swallowed by quicksand.

A tiared forehead nudged his shoulder. "Hey."

He looked down, only half-seeing her.

Her fingers squeezed his, a rope pulling him from the quicksand. "Let's go home."

L

Serena opened her eyes. And shrieked, flailing backward. "Lita!"

Her brown-haired friend pulled back, the green eyes that had been mere centimeters from Serena's nose now narrowed.

"You were sleeping like the dead," she said tautly. "And that's not just a figure of speech. Forgive me for being a little worried."

Serena was immediately contrite. "I'm sorry. I was in…"

She broke off, looking around for Darien, almost as alarmed as she had in Elysion when Rini had not woken up. He had seemed so vulnerable right before he brought them back, his eyes those of a lost child… "Where's Darien?"

A sudden weight on the couch cushion beside her tilted her sideways. She looked, and there sat Darien.

"Oh," she said faintly, relief filling her. Dimly, she realized that she had detransformed.

Lita, at Darien's sudden reappearance, leapt backward as though she had been burned. "What the hell – how – ?"

"Elysion," said Darien. He cleared his throat, standing up.

The cold air from the open window rushed against Serena's side to replace his warm shoulder. It was still dark as pitch, she saw, and according to the clock on the wall, it was barely even midnight. Wow. It seemed to her as though a whole day and night had passed.

"I," Darien began, "need to apologize for my actions yesterday."

Lita's brows flew a mile in the air. Asanuma pinched himself. Serena's arms slackened around Rini, who groaned and stirred.

"Rini!" she exclaimed. Despite the cool reassurance Helios had given her, she had been dreadfully worried that the girl wouldn't wake up even when they returned. "Are you okay? How do you feel? Do you want something to eat?"

Rini did not reply. She held tighter to Serena's sleeves, burrowing into her shoulder and watching everyone with wide, dark blue eyes.

"Well." Asanuma clapped his hands together. "I feel awkward. Anyone else feel awkward? Let's have a show of hands."

"I feel pissed," said Lita. She stared at Darien. "Fine if you want to go off on your own semi-suicidal traipses through Elysion, bastard, but don't drag Serena with you!"

"Lita." Motoki sat forward on the couch, hands out. Dark circles smudged his eyes. "Calm down."

"No, I'm not calming down!" Lita stomped over to Darien and seized him by the collar. With her other hand she pointed at Rini. "THERE is your proof that you end up with the princess! Got it? So quit leeching Serena and let her get a life! I catch you dragging her to Elysion one more time, and you'll be there PERMANENTLY. Got it?"

"Lita!" Serena shot to her feet, pressing Rini's head to her collar and covering the little girl's exposed ear with the same hand. "I'll decide who's in my life – "

Her voice cut off in shock. For Darien, standing limply in Lita's grip with no attempt to free himself, was bowing his head in obvious assent to the brunette's demands.

Asanuma pinched himself again.

"Wait, Serena." Darien's head was still bowed, his black hair falling over his eyes. "Lita's right."

"No." Motoki was looking at Darien as though he'd sprouted horns. Which he had, in Elysion, but they didn't know that.

Motoki spoke slowly, as though to preschoolers, facing Serena but with his eyes on Darien and Lita. "No one has the right to decide who's in Serena's life except Serena."

"That's not what I meant." Darien's head lifted to look at Serena, his eyes aglow behind his bangs. "I meant that I won't take you to Elysion any more. I apologize, it wasn't intentional. Like I said before – I'm sorry. To everyone."

Serena stared at him. So many things had happened in the past few hours that she could not even begin to pinpoint the reason for his abrupt change of behavior. Her eyes floated from him to wander across the rest of her friends' faces.

"I think," she said even more slowly than Motoki, as though she was listening to each word after she said it to make sure that it was the one that she had intended, "that we all need some sleep.

"Except you, bright-eyes," she told Rini, who still clung to her, and ruffled her hair. "I think you could give Sleeping Beauty a run for her money."

Somehow energized by the sight of the little girl clinging to her as though she was her last safe bastion in the universe, bolstered by the idea that Rini was _depending_ on her, Serena speared the others on her blue-eyed gaze.

"Everyone, go home and _sleep_," she said firmly. "Darien, that means NOT going to Elysion. No camping in trees, no patrolling streets, no…midnight cooking!" she finished, looking at Motoki and Lita. "Go to sleep, and do not get out of bed before eight o'clock tomorrow morning! Even if there's a youma!"

"What, are you gonna get it?" said Asanuma, grinning despite himself.

Serena spun on him.

"I will," she said fiercely. "And I'll get you, too, if I catch you trying to dust it yourself." Her eyes roved across them. "That goes for ALL of you. Got it?" Her eyes went to Darien last, but they did not longer on him for any longer than they had lingered on anyone else. "Good."

She transformed again, blocking as best she could her bond with Darien, and jumped home with Rini in her arms.

She dropped onto her windowsill and let Rini down, then climbed into the room herself.

"Now," she said, detransforming. "Do you feel like sleeping?"

Rini looked at the nest of pink blankets beside Serena's bed. Serena saw the progression of her thoughts across her face; she was about to lie, then her expression turned despondent, and she said honestly, "No."

"Then I have the perfect remedy for the gloomies." Serena reached into her subspace pocket and pulled out the Luna Pen. "You put on your pajamas. I'll be right back."

She used the Luna Pen to become invisible and sneaked downstairs. She crept back up to her room two minutes later with a carton of cookie dough ice cream and two spoons.

Rini eyed them dubiously from where she sat beside Serena's bed in the frilly pink flannel pajamas that Ikuko had bought for her.

"I see that look." Serena set the carton on her nightside table. "You're thinking, 'How is getting fat is supposed to make me feel better?'"

Rini looked at the ice cream carton, then at Serena, and nodded.

Serena hopped into her own frilly pink pajama top and pants. "Growing up with a guy like Asanuma, you never got to learn the therapeutic powers of a good pig-out. But never fear – _I_ am an expert! C'mere."

She plopped down in front of her bookshelf, grabbed the pillows and blankets off her bed, and patted the floor next to her.

Rini, with at least a token show of reluctance, dragged her next of blankets to the indicated spot.

"Ta-daaaa!" Serena pushed a dusty set of encyclopedias onto the floor and revealing behind them a gleaming, colorful, and alphabetically-ordered row of manga. "This is Shelf One, which contains Level One manga. Good for beginners." She paused, looking at Rini with a very serious expression. "Even so, I usually wouldn't let a kindergartener read them…but, well, you've shown that you can handle it." She crossed her arms, nodding vigorously.

A faint pink touched Rini's cheek; she looked embarrassed. Serena smiled internally and looked at the row of tankubon.

"Hmm…there's _Fruits Basket_, that would probably be a good one to start with – oh, but I lent out volume five, that's the most important one! There's _Naruto_, of course, but it's not finished yet, so it's not really the best to start with...ooh, _Cardcaptor Sakura's_ good – oh, but I lent out volumes six and seven? _Shee-eesh_….well, anyway!" She sat back. "Which one do you think?"

She watched Rini scan the shelf from the corner of her eye as she wrestled open the ice cream carton and dug out a big spoonful.

At last, Rini looked up. "Which one's your least favorite?" she asked Serena stiffly. "Since our tastes are probably pretty different."

"Oh. Well…" Serena smiled a little and pointed at _Inuyasha_, which was actually one of her favorite series – and every other teenaged girl in Japan. Its main character wasn't so sugary sweet that she would antagonize the no-nonsense Rini, and there was action as well. "That one, probably."

Rini pulled out one of the pink volume and shot her a glance, but Serena kept her expression bland.

"Ice cream?" she asked unconcernedly, holding out a spoon to her.

Rini took the spoon and scooted back to lean against the bed. She brought a spoonful of ice cream to her mouth, cracked open the volume, and began to read.

Serena settled down with her own backlog of _LaLa_ and_ Nakayoshi_ magazines, which had built up considerably in the past few months while she was busy training with Lanai and fighting youma. But she barely concentrated on them, watching Rini read from the corner of her eye, at first turning the pages only to keep Rini from becoming suspicious. Then, as Rini grew more engrossed in the volume, making little sounds of surprise and indignation and clumsily digging spoonfuls of ice cream from the carton without looking, Serena didn't even have to bother pretending to read anymore, she just watched Rini.

Relief and gratitude that her plan to distract Rini had worked filled her body all the way to her fingertips and toes. Although she understood clearly Darien's actions – she understood them and even empathized with him; she had felt every inch of his emotions through the rope, after all – she could imagine Rini's feelings as well. Had her father Kenji said in front of her about Ikuko the things that Darien had said in front of Rini about the Moon Princess, Serena would have felt like shrinking into the dirt and out of existence. It was bad enough when your parents fought; when they did that, you _felt_ as though you shouldn't have been born; but Darien had as well as said that he wished that Rini hadn't been born.

If only the moon princess would come find them. Disapproval and anger burned deep in Serena's heart. If the princess would just come, then Darien would surely fall in love with her, and he would not feel so alone and enraged and desperate all the time. Then Rini would be able to see her parents in love and would grow up happily, not resentful and guarded. Then Darien and the princess could defeat the Black Moon and then Chaos, and everyone would live happily ever after…

L

"Your ten o'clock appointment here to see you, sir."

Senator Hino's lips compressed. On the wall, the clock's hands rested at 10:15. He leaned across his desk, pressing the intercom button. "Send him in."

Then he leaned back in his chair to wait, hands sprawled casually over his armrests to convey to the man, even subconsciously, that he was in charge here. His office, his Senate…the demands were his to make. Not the other way around.

The oaken door directly in front of his desk was pushed open. Not too quickly, but not slowly, either. Tomoe was a damn cold fish. The pale physician walked into Hino's office as though it was his own, sitting in one of the cushioned chairs without waiting to be asked.

Tomoe looked at Hino from behind his glasses with that freakish eye as though daring him to question his tardiness. Hino ignored it, eyeing the man right back.

Tomoe's lips curved upward. "I must admit some surprise at receiving your call, Senator Hino. It's not every day a small-town doctor speaks to one of the highest men in our government."

"Please," said Hino flatly. "In the scientific community your name is as well-known as the word Watergate is in America."

Tomoe smiled frostily. "Perhaps I should modify my statement, then." He folded his leg over his knee. "It's not every day that a doctor whose name is mud in the scientific community is contacted by one of the highest men in our government. Especially so close to election season." He appraised Hino with his faux eye. "Have you found something to intrigue you in my studies, then?"

"I don't give a damn about your studies," Hino said. He reached under into a drawer in his desk and pulled out a newspaper. "You have a daughter, I believe?"

"Yes. I brought her along to the benefit at which you were introduced to me – " Tomoe glanced at the newspaper as Hino slid it toward him. A spread of pictures of the recent cancer research group benefit filled the pages. "Ah. Yes, this one."

"Hotaru Tomoe, fourteen years old, tall for her age," read Hino from a file in front of him. "Black hair, dark eyes, very pale skin."

Hino had read him correctly: rather than appearing disturbed by this reeling-off of information about his daughter, Tomoe appeared interested.

"Yes," he confirmed Hino's description with a nod.

Hino leaned forward. "You've heard of my own daughter, Dr. Tomoe?"

"Rei Hino. Sixteen years old, black hair, dark eyes, very pale skin." Tomoe inclined his head. "Said to be identical to her late mother. Disappeared several months ago and has yet to be found despite rewards offered for information leading to her discovery. Yes, I do believe I've heard of her, Senator Hino."

Hino, unlike Tomoe, was perturbed by this detailed knowledge of his daughter; he stared at Tomoe with hard eyes for a moment. Then he leaned back in his chair.

"You and the rest of my constituents, Dr. Tomoe. The public swarmed to support a man whose daughter had been kidnapped. But with half a year passed and no solid statement from the police that she actually was kidnapped, people are starting to think she just ran away. Voters don't like politicians with rebellious daughters. Ugly family image. The grieving widower is much better. But a victorious happily-ever after story is even better. You have a Ph.D., Dr. Tomoe, I trust you can see where I'm going with this?"

"You want Hotaru to pretend to be your daughter."

"Yes." Hino leaned forward, slightly annoyed that Tomoe had so quickly and succinctly grasped his plan. "I would only require her until election day. To show the voters visual proof that she's back, she wouldn't even need to give a statement, I would take care of that. She would only need to stay at the house in Tokyo and stand next to me at campaigning events, maybe a few campaign ads."

"Three hundred thousand American dollars."

"I'll do no such thing." Hino glared at him fiercely. "Seventy-five thousand."

"You are asking to use my daughter," said Tomoe mildly. "My own flesh and blood. Not one of my patents. Two hundred thousand."

"One hundred."

"One seventy-five."

"Fine." Hino pursed his lips, pulling his checkbook from inside his suit jacket. He began to write the check. "Half now and half after she's finished."

"Even if you're not elected," added Tomoe, lazily now that he had gotten what he wanted.

Hino tore the check out and slid it across the desk to Tomoe. "That won't happen."

L

Serena jerked awake. The half-open magazine toppled out of her lap onto the floor.

Blearily she blinked at her alarm clock. Nine o'clock. A tiny column of sunlight leapt between the closed curtains to land on her blanketless bed. The sight reminded her

of all the previous day's events, and she whipped her head around so quickly that her neck cracked. She expected to see Rini gone, or lying on a pillow soaked with tears, or even caught in the throes of nightmares.

The sight that met her eyes was none of these.

Rini lay sprawled on her stomach on top of her pillows and blankets, her limbs akimbo. One of Serena's manga was bent open under her cheek. Her arms crossed under her head to form a pillow as her slow, deep breaths stirred the strands of hair that hung around her face.

It was the first time that Serena had seen her so peacefully asleep…and she was adorable! An unnamable emotion bubbled inside her like a warm geyser. She had to squash down the compulsion to swoop down and kiss the flushed little cheek.

Instead she crawled over to Rini and pulled the manga gently out from under her head, sliding a pillow under it instead.

The manga upon which Rini had fallen asleep was bent flat in half, a damage which would have elicited an enraged squawk from Serena under any other circumstances. But any annoyance that might have bubbled in her was instantly buried by what she saw – that the_ Inuyasha_ manga Rini had fallen asleep reading was the twelfth one in the series!

Serena cackled despite the gravity of the previous day's events. Another convert to the manga religion!

She pulled a blanket over Rini and patted at her own usually Medusa-like morning hair to tame it before going downstairs. To her surprise, her hands found a neat braid in a bun at the back of her neck, fastened by a… she pulled the flower from her hair and held it in front of her.

It was a rose. Of such a flawless quality and freshness that it could only be from Darien. She struggled to remember when he could have braided her hair. She had a vague memory of gentle fingers combing through her hair, but when…

The rose's appearance distracted her. She had never seen a rose that looked like this before; it was red, the same red as the roses that Tuxedo Mask threw were, but white flecks spattered the dark petals. They reminded Serena of the yellow spots and brown spots that would appear on trees' leaves in autumn before they withered away and fell.

She fingered the braid that was coming loose at the back of her head. Quickly she clipped it up with a hair-pin from her nightstand and left the rose sitting there, somehow eager to escape the sight of it.

When she trotted downstairs, she was greeted with a loud exclamation.

"_Serena_'s up before _Rini_?" The whole family expression their shock in various ways: Ikuko dropped a waffle she was putting on a plate, Kenji feigned spewing coffee, and Sammy ran to the window to look for flying swine.

"Ha ha." Serena threw them each their own glare and plopped down at the table. "STRAWBERRY SYRUP!"

"I bet Rini's awake NOW," said Sammy as Serena gleefully poured a deluge of the glutinous magenta syrup atop her mound of waffles.

Sure enough, Rini came padding downstairs two minutes later, her robe tied crisply and her hair brushed smooth, though a few spiky locks had jumped free.

"I think a space shuttle just entered the atmosphere," she said. "I heard a sonic boom."

"I _love _this kid!" exclaimed Sammy around a mouthful of waffle.

"Would you like some waffles, sweetheart?" Ikuko asked Rini.

"I would rather have eggs, please, Aunt Ikuko." Rini clasped her hands shyly behind her back. "Waffles don't have any nutritional value." She yawned suddenly, hand moving up to cover her mouth –

Serena moved fast, grabbing the hand and stuffing a forkful of waffles into Rini's mouth instead.

Rini's eyes snapped open. "SERENA!" she shrieked, but it came out all mmphled by the mouthful of strawberry-syrup-drenched waffles.

"Waffles have nutritional value," said Serena indignantly. "Nutritional value for your _soul_."

Rini swallowed, still looking mutinous, but something in her expression had changed. Her mouth opened, then closed, then she glowered fiercely, looking murderous. "Ikuko-san, I would like some waffles, please."

"MUAHAHAHAHAHA!" Serena clapped her hands together, cackling once more. She had converted Rini to manga AND waffles with strawberry syrup – and in a span of twelve hours! Was she good, or was she good? "You won't regret it, Rini, I promise!"

"Yeah, but YOU might." Sammy eyed the monstrous stack of waffles his mother set down in front of Rini. "When she eats all the waffles you planned on inhaling."

Serena, mournfully eying her own now-empty plate, and Rini's full one, realized that her brother might have a point.

L

As the day progressed, Rini's similarities to Darien became so obvious to Serena that she couldn't believe that she hadn't realized them before. She had noticed, of course, that Rini's suspicious temperament resembled Darien's, that her sense of humor was just as dry, and that they both had those to-die-for cheekbones and silky hair that liked to spike out disobediently. But even some of their reactions were the same, the most evident of which Serena was watching at this very moment as they walked down the street on a mission to buy milk for her mother.

When Darien was upset by something, his face turned into a stone. Hard and blank. At least, it had until lately, Serena modified, recalling with a roiling stomach Darien's most recent foul-mouthed outburst. But in the past, before Fiore had died, impassivity had been his method of handling strong emotions.

Rini, Serena now saw, had the same mechanism. Her face was like a sheet of Serena's trigonometry homework: totally blank. Serena had not wanted to prod the subject of yesterday last night, hence her distraction with the manga, but the unaffected face that Rini now wore frightened her more than had the girl's bursting out into tears the afternoon before. She had never thought that it was healthy when Darien bottled up all his feelings, and she didn't think it was any healthier for Rini to do so.

"Stop staring at me," said Rini, breaking into Serena's thoughts as though she had been able to read them. And considering that Darien was her father, Serena realized, perhaps she could. "I'm fine."

"_I _wouldn't be fine, if it was me," escaped from Serena's mouth.

Rini kept walking. She stared straight ahead. "You think I didn't know he didn't love me? I've known my whole life. Parents who love their kids don't leave them behind and treat them as if they don't exist."

"They've never visited you?" Serena asked, disbelief leaking into her voice. "Or – called?"

Rini shook her head once, sharply, still walking and staring ahead. "They're fighting Chaos. They have been for a long time, and my mother stopped to have me. But Chaos grew really powerful while she was gone. They left to fight and left me with Asanuma. But whatever." She shrugged, as though trying to dislodge something from her shoulders. "It doesn't bother me."

"Oh, Rini." Serena fell into a crouch, catching the little girl's hands and burying her in a hug.

Rini stiffened. She turned her head away from Serena's shoulder, her chin jutting out.

"I said it doesn't bother me," she repeated. "You can't miss something you didn't have, dummy."

Serena bit down on her lip hard, her face pressed against Rini's silky, spiky hair.

"Why am _I_ reassuring _you_?" said Rini, still standing stubbornly stock-straight with her arms crossed and not softening into Serena's hug. "Asanuma takes care of me. And he actually loves me, so the situation is better off for everyone."

Serena couldn't believe what she was hearing. Did Rini really believe that her parents didn't love her? Was it really true? Had Darien really left his own daughter alone for such a long time without even so much as a letter or a phone call? After being so alone during his own childhood and knowing how terrible it was? Had the Moon Princess, who was supposed to be an angel, really left her own daughter all alone? And she herself, the Sailor Moon of the future, had she really stepped back and let them do that?

No. No, there had to be a reason. There _had_ to be.

Abruptly, Serena began to speak.

"I remember my first day of school here. We moved right in the middle of third grade, and I didn't know anyone because Dad had moved us here for his new job. I had to leave behind our old house and all my friends, and I was so MAD at him. I hated him for doing that to me. I thought we would have been way better off at our old house with my old friends, even if I had to share a room with my little brother. I gave him a really hard time, and I overheard him talking with Mom about whether they'd made the right decision to move. Neither of them were sure." She laughed a little. "It was really…_weird_, to realize that there was something they didn't know the answer to."

She sobered, her eyes darkening as she gazed into the past. "Kind of scary, to tell you the truth."

Rini was watching her, but when Serena's eyes caught hers, she rolled them. "And the moral of this story is?"

"Our parents really have no clue what they're doing." Serena hooked a weak half smile. "They can only make what they think is the best decision for us. So I think Darien and the princess must have had a reason to leave you with Asanuma and never talk to you. Maybe it was the wrong reason. But there _had_ to have been a reason. You know the kind of guy your dad is now, and you know he doesn't do things just because he feels like it."

They had reached the grocery store. Serena wended her way down the aisles to the dairy section, entangled in her own doubts about the wisdom – or lack thereof – of leaving a child behind, Chaos or not. Rini trotted along behind her, simmering in her own inscrutable thoughts.

When they had paid and were walking out of the store again, Rini spoke.

"What could make YOU leave YOUR kids?"

Serena winced. Her answer to this question would basically undo all that she had just said. But Rini had Darien's knack of being able to smell her lies from a mile away. So she answered honestly, "Nothing."

"But you just said – "

Serena shook her head, cutting her off. "Yes, but Rini, _I_ know better now, thanks to you. Now that I've met you, I understand how much it hurts a kid to be left behind by their parents."

"I said it doesn't bother me," began Rini angrily. "I shouldn't have told you all that anyway, I'm not supposed to talk about the fut – " She was cut off again, this time as her knees seemed to buckle beneath her. Her tail bone landed hard on the pavement. The wind was knocked from her lungs. She blinked stupidly.

"Rini!" Serena grabbed her up, brushing off her clothes, checking her for injuries. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"I…" Rini blinked, still trying to catch her breath. She could have sworn that her legs had just disappeared beneath her… "I'm fine."

"And people call ME a klutz," said Serena, looking vaguely proud. "There wasn't even a crack in the sidewalk where you tripped."

Rini was about to say that she hadn't tripped, but she felt fuzzy and…strange. A little surreal, as though she was walking through a dream and her body wasn't quite her own. Trying to balance, she wrapped her fingers tighter around Serena's hand, which had grabbed hers when she fell. The older girl tightened her hand around Rini's in response as she looked down at her.

Rini turned her head away from the warmth in the blonde's eyes. It was on her tongue to say that she had grabbed Serena's hand only for balance, not out of affection or in search of comfort, but she swallowed the words. And let Serena hold her hand the rest of the way home.

L

Rini had settled in with a stack of the next ten _Inuyasha_ manga in Serena's room, and Serena was at her desk, glowering at a particularly stubborn math problem, when the doorbell rang just before dinner. Dad and Sammy had gone out for their weekly Saturday guys' night out, and Mom was making dinner, which meant…

"Serena!" shouted Ikuko up the stairs. "I'm watching the biscuits, can you get that?"

Reluctantly, because she hated being subjected to a minute-long gape as whoever was at the door stared at her scars, Serena pushed her chair from her desk and clambered down the stairs.

She swung open the door. "Hello – oh!"

Haruka Tennou flashed her a wide smile. "Good evening, Serena-san!"

"Hi!" echoed Serena back. "Um – uh – "

"Sorry for showing up so unexpectedly. Kind of rude, I know…" He lifted the corner of his lips in an apologetic grin.

"No! No, not rude!" Serena was aware that she was babbling but was unable to do anything about it. This was her chance. This was her chance to build her up her romantic affections for someone who wasn't Darien. And she really did feel a strange sensation emanating from her insides, pulling her toward Haruka-san almost like he was an electromagnet and she was an iron filing – she grabbed the door jamb. "Just – unexpected. Um. You already said that, didn't you? Oops. Um, why don't you come in?"

"I wouldn't want to impose," began Haruka-san, but then Ikuko appeared behind Serena.

"No imposition at all, Tennou-san," she said graciously, wiping her wet hands on her apron. "Would you like to stay for supper? I'm afraid Serena's father isn't home, but we're having baked chicken."

"Thank you, but now, Tsukino-san, I actually have supper plans already. Actually, I came to see if Serena-san was available to join me for them…" He cast his dark eyes Serena's way. Serena noticed for the first time that they were exactly the color of blueberries. She liked that, she decided.

"Ah – me?" Serena stared at him, then glanced at her mother.

"It's this get-together put on by my sponsors – my cousin was going to go with me, but she backed out at the last minute. I'm committed to go, but I'm always the youngest one there, and it gets kind of boring… I know it's short notice, but I was hoping you would rescue me?" He wore an unabashedly pleading expression. "If that's okay with you, Tsukino-san."

"Actually, I heard about the dinner, one of Kenji's colleagues is going to be there doing photography." Ikuko tapped her chin, looking intently at Serena. Serena tried not to squirm under her mother's gaze, feeling like an onion being peeled. "Serena…have you finished your history essay yet?"

Serena didn't have a history essay due this week, her mom knew that… _oh_. Ikuko was giving her a chance to get out of going if she didn't want to without actually turning Haruka-san down herself. And she had a sneaking suspicion as to why…her mother had always had quite a soft spot for a certain black-haired high school senior.

This realization alone made Serena blurt out, "Yes! I mean, yes, I've done my essay, and I'd love to go, Haruka-san!" She backpedaled suddenly, suddenly noticing his dressy white shirt and black blazer for the first time. "Oh – is it dressy?"

"Not really," Haruka assured her. "Formal informal, if that makes any sense."

"Your white dress, Serena," said Ikuko.

Serena hedged, trying to tell her Mom through her eye contact what she was too embarrassed to say aloud. The white dress had spaghetti-straps. Her scars would be as obvious as…as…as the fact that Rini was Darien's daughter!

"That one," said Ikuko firmly. "We'll be right back, Tennou-san."

Serena was about to make another face. Then she remembered. Of course, duh! She would just use the Luna Pen to wear a dress with sleeves –

Except Ikuko was now frogmarching her up the stairs and into her room. And opening her closet. And apparently waiting to help her get dressed.

"Um – you know, Mom, I might have something else in the closet," tried Serena, aware of Rini looking up from her manga to watch them.

"No, you don't," said Ikuko. "I wash your clothes and put them away, Serena, I know what's in your closet. You agreed to go with Tennou-san, and that dress is the only one you've got that's suitable. Now put it on."

Her tone was uncharacteristically clipped.

"Is…something wrong, Mom?" Serena asked tentatively.

Ikuko sighed. She glanced over her shoulder at Rini. "It looks as if it's just going to be you and me for supper tonight, Rini dear."

Then she looked back at Serena, although carefully avoiding her eyes. "Sweetheart, it's just…I thought…I thought that you liked _Darien_."

Serena flushed bright red. Rini was right _there_! "N-no, Mom!" she stammered, eyes darting this way and that. "We're just FRIENDS!"

She reached into the closet and tore the filmy white dress from its hanger, yanking off her shirt, changing the subject hastily. "Here, help me with this – can you zip that – "

The pink flush across her shoulders and neck revealed by the dress belied her denial, however. Serena grimaced at her reflection in the mirror, trying to avoid both Rini's eyes and the hideous scars that were also revealed by the dress.

"Wait, what's going on?" asked Rini from behind her. "Where's she going?"

"Tennou-san needs someone to accompany him to a dinner," answered Ikuko as she leaned over to inspect Serena's braid. "Your hair looks very nice like this, dear, do you want to leave it?"

"No," whispered Serena, acutely and wretchedly aware of who had done the braid. How could she possibly hope to shove Darien out of her head on a date with Haruka when he was the one who had done her hair? "I'll put it in buns."

"But with some sort of decoration," insisted her mother as Serena undid the braid and parted her hair, looping it up into her normal two streamers. The braid had left it soft tangle-less, not needing a brush, and full of tiny ripples besides. "Oh! This! This will be perfect!"

Serena looked up in the mirror as she pinned her second hair-bun. Ikuko was holding the white-edged rose from her nightstand.

"Um, no," began Serena, but Ikuko was already weaving its stem through her first bun so that it nestled there like one of her barrettes from her old Sailor Moon transformation.

"There!" Ikuko stood back to admire her work, hands on her hips. The white in the rose matched the dress perfectly, and Serena had a necklace with a red stone from one of her friends… She rummaged in her jewelry box and pulled it out, fastening it around Serena's neck. "You look beautiful, sweetheart."

Serena could not agree. She felt ugly inside and out, with her scars all over her shoulder and the memory of her mother's words, _I thought that you liked Darien, _hanging in the air as she felt Rini's eyes burning into her back.

"Down we go," said Ikuko. "Rini, you and I'll have dinner in just ten minutes, remember to wash up before then."

Ikuko pushed Serena before her, and Serena trudged from the room without daring to look at Rini. She couldn't bring herself to look at Haruka-san, either, as she came down the steps, certain that he would probably be so disgusted by the sight of her scars that he would make a hasty excuse and leave. Making things even better, she tripped on the last stair in the flimsy white high heels that her mother had strapped on without her noticing. The floor rushed up to meet her.

For a fleeting instant, she felt that magnetic pull again, and she was so distracted by it that she didn't realize until she was upright that Haruka-san had caught her and had his arm around her waist, and she didn't realize that she had planned not to look at him until she was already staring into his blueberry eyes.

"Did it hurt?"

"Um," Serena breathed. "No, no, I'm fine – "

Belatedly, she remembered to push away. She took a step backward; his arm fell from around her waist.

"No, no," said Haruka-san, shaking his head and grinning. "You messed up my line. I ask, 'Did it hurt?' And you say, 'When?' And then I say, 'When you fell from heaven.'"

Serena burst into a smile. A gale of breathless giggles followed them; she couldn't help it. Mortification, sheer relief, and pure giddiness at how similar her predicament was to a manga synergized to take temporary control of her mouth. It was easy to remember now that Haruka-san had not seemed at all fazed by her scars when he saw them the first time they met. Why had she worried?

Haruka-san glanced at his watch. "Well, we'd best be off."

"Wait, Serena, take a coat, it's cold," said Ikuko. She grabbed one from the hook by the door and draped it over Serena's shoulders. "We need her back by eleven, please, Haruka-san."

"You have my word, Tsukino-san. Thank you so much, again." Haruka bowed at the waist like a courtier. "Please thank your husband for me also."

"Yes, yes," said Ikuko. Serena, descending slightly from her high, hoped that Haruka-san would not notice that her mother's smile was slightly forced. "Be good, Serena."

"Of course, Mama."

Haruka escorted her down the front walkway to the street, where his sleek black sports car was parked. He opened the passenger door for her; Serena tried to struggle out of the fairy-tale gaiety hugging her like a cocoon. She barely knew Haruka-san; her determination to transfer her affections from Darien to another guy did not mean she should start planning a wedding and the kids' names with a boy she'd only seen talked to twice!

But he was being so…_princely_. He was a famous, gorgeous idol, and he was acting as though it was _his _honor to be around _her_. It was like eating a whole box of doughnuts; even though she knew that giving into their gooey goodness wasn't a good idea and would probably lead to a stomachache later, she polished them off. Even though she knew it didn't make sense for Haruka-san to like a scarred-up normal girl like her – okay, well, maybe not quite _normal_ – and that there had to be some catch, or at least some stroke of midnight, she threw herself wholeheartedly into the illusion.

Besides, she reminded herself indignantly, before she'd become a Senshi, planning weddings and kids' names with guys they'd never met, much less met only once or twice, was exactly what she had done with her friends. After all, Molly had never _met _Johnny Depp. Maybe she was acting foolishly, but at least it was _normal_. She needed a little normalcy in her life, didn't she…?

"You look very deep in thought."

Serena started in the deep, heated passenger seat. "Sorry. I was. Deep in thought, I mean."

"Dangerous pastime," remarked Haruka. "Thinking doesn't usually consist of very happy thoughts, does it?"

"We-ell…" Serena chewed her lip. "Sometimes it can. I think it's just that when we're happy we have better things to do than think."

"There's always better things to do than think," said Haruka, and they both laughed.

"So – not to be rude," said Serena, watching his profile, "but how'd you even find my house?"

Haruka made a sheepish face. "I might have glanced at your address on the form your dad filled out at the mechanic's… I didn't want to risk the chance of never seeing you again!" he defended himself, glancing at her with a nervous expression that she suspected was feigned. "This is the past where you say, 'That's kind of sweet, actually.' "

"You script out what I'm going to say a lot," observed Serena.

"And you deviate from the script a lot." Haruka flashed her a grin. "You're not what I expected, Sa – Serena." He grinned sheepishly again. "Look at that, you made me stutter because you look so beautiful."

Serena's breath stuck in her throat in surprise. Then got stuck again as Haruka's hand reached over to touch her hair.

"You don't see too many roses this time of year," he said.

"A – a friend gave it to me," said Serena with a little stutter of her own.

"Not too close a friend, I hope?" Haruka flicked his eyes from the road to flash her a rakish grin.

Serena forced her smile and her voice to remain light. "Nope."

L

So much apprehension pooled in Darien's stomach as he landed outside Serena's window that he felt as though he had eaten one of Furuhata-san's seven-course home-cooked meals. After sleeping all night, he had spent the day training with Helios in Elysion to transform his hands into those of animals. And, quite forgetting that the priest did not even know what he had said in front of Rini, Darien felt quite certain that he could feel an accusing _Go apologize_ vibe emanating from Helios as intensely as heat from a fire.

Thus, thanks to his unconscious paranoia, he ended up at Serena's house at nine o'clock that night.

The window, he was able to sense, was closed, an unusual occurrence. Despite all his constant scolding to close her windows at night, he found himself vaguely unhappy: had she changed her tune only now because she knew that the legacy of the Golden and Silver crystals was staying with her?

Filled with self-consciousness, he rapped once, twice on the window, then rocked back on his haunches to wait. Several moments passed; his forehead creased, and he stretched out to explore the air in the house. He could sense where the denser molecules of a human body pressed against the molecules composing the air as well as the areas where water vapor was more concentrated in the air from exhalation. He preferred this method to that of seeking out auras, for auras often gave him more information than he wanted to know, emotions-wise – made him feel like an invader.

To his surprise, there were only two bodies in the house. Both of them were downstairs in the living room…and neither of them was Serena. One was younger and, now that he could recognize it, pulsed faintly with an aura that tugged at his own like a tide pulling at the shore: Rini. The other, far weaker, he immediately recognized as Ikuko's warm, complacent presence, though it was faintly tinged with unease. The unease leapt instantly to him like an electrical current; had something happened to Serena?

Swiftly he clambered down the tree's trunk, galloping across the grass to the living room window. He had barely stopped there, crouching beneath the window, when he heard Rini's voice yawn widely.

"Oh, listen to you," said Ikuko's voice, none of the worry that permeated her aura evident in her voice. "Up to bed with you right now, sleepyhead. You and Serena were up late last night reading those manga."

"But," Rini's voice began to protest, her voice still thick with drowsiness – none of which was evident in her aura.

"No buts," said Ikuko's voice. "You'll see Serena when you wake up tomorrow morning. To bed you go. Shall I come tuck you in?"

"No, that's okay…" yawned Rini's voice. Darien heard the muffled thumps of her feet on the stairs. He darted back up the tree.

He had just reached his usual perch when the windows swung open.

"Serena's not here," said Rini's voice before he could ask. Her voice held not a shred of the drowsiness that had saturated it downstairs. "Should I take a message?"

"Uh – no," said Darien uncomfortably. Even in a less penitent state, he would have recognized that his own daughter shouldn't be so automatically aware that he had come to see Serena and not her.

He tried to make his voice offhand. "Where is she?"

After a moment, Rini said, "Out."

Darien was forcing his senses not to seek out more. "Safe?" All he needed to make sure was that she was alright and hadn't gone off on some life-threatening mission, like the time she'd gone to confront Rei, Ami, and Luna by herself. "Ikuko-san seems…concerned," he finished delicately.

"Does she?" The studied blankness of her voice dug at him. She was six, and she was playing him like a flute…like he had played the matrons at the orphanage when he was her age. Dispassionately and capably. "Well…she doesn't have a reason to."

Rini's words, however irritatingly delivered, were true enough – if Serena was involved in something like an unscheduled play-date with rogue Senshi, Ikuko certainly wouldn't be aware of it to be worried about it. So it was something more mundane, then…

He tried to think of what could cause Serena's mother to worry about her and came up blank. Hardly any youma seemed threatening to him these days; the idea of Serena's mother being worried about her walking down the street alone to buy candy was practically laughable. Of course, in perspective, he hated to imagine how much fear would fill Ikuko-san if she knew what things _really _threatened Serena…

Rini cleared her throat. He straightened, leaving his thoughts, and knew quite suddenly and certainly that he was not ready to make the apology that he had spent hours composing in his head.

Instead, he said, "You knew I was here."

"You practically stuck your aura up my nose," said Rini's voice. "I'm six, not stupid."

Darien was aware that he should feel proud, but unsettlement and a tinge of anxiety filled him instead. He had only learned to sense and read auras in the past year, and he already felt dangerously blasphemous, as though he was playing God. Rini was six years old and more light years ahead of him in her abilities – he could not help but think of what Helios had said.

"_Part of the reason that the Moon and Earth were kept apart was because of the fear of the powers that any child of the Golden and Silver Crystals would possess."_

She could sense auras, she could transform into plants – "What else can you do?"

"Long division," she replied. "No offense, I know you're my father and all, but if you don't want me to take a message, then why are you still here?"

She sounded so much like him. How had he not noticed before? Had he actually thought that normal six year-olds spoke like this? Only a child of his could be so cynical, so cavalier and cold, at such a young age.

"I came to apologize for yesterday," he heard himself say. He sounded like a robot. "My behavior toward and in front of you was unacceptable."

He felt the breath of air as she crossed her arms. "So? It was what you felt. Why apologize for that?"

Indeed, thought Darien, stung and incensed by her rejection of his apology. Why should he? Yet he smothered his resentment. "Because I had no right to speak to you that way."

"Is that why?" The scornful contempt in her voice was bone-chillingly familiar to him. "I don't think it is. I think it's because you know that Serena would want you to apologize, and you don't want her thinking badly of you. You meant what you said." There was another breath of air as she shrugged. "And it doesn't matter to me. So next time just save your breath."

Darien was already stepping back, fists clenched, when she spoke again. "And Ikuko-san shouldn't be worried about Serena. She's just out on a date with Haruka Tennou."

Blood snarled in Darien's ears. He squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself back to Elysion.

L

"Senshi Lanai."

Lanai turned, sour-faced, expecting another guard demanding to see her authorization for being in the departure bay. When instead she saw the light-haired center member of the High Senshi Council, her eyes widened, and she threw herself to her knees.

"High Senshi Galaxia!"

Long fingers splayed themselves atop Lanai's head. "At ease, Lanai."

"I obey, High Sister." Lanai lifted her head and rose to her feet, keeping her fist pressed to her collarbone in deference.

"You are preparing for your return to Terra." The Senshi's metal headdress clinked quietly as she walked around Lanai.

"Yes, High Sister. Endymion must be stopped." Lanai kept her eyes on the floor.

The clinking stopped, as did the staccato clicks of Galaxia's metal heels against the floor. "I would that we spoke privately, Lanai."

Dipping her head in obedience, Lanai rose to her feet and followed Galaxia to a small chamber off the departure bay. Galaxia closed the door portal behind them.

Lanai stood stock-still behind a chair, wondering if she was about to be replaced and returned to her old duties. Although it would be an embarrassment to be removed from the mission, she missed her old, familiar missions, devoid of subterfuge and lies, directing her squadrons, battling with all that her bones and flesh and aura could give her against hordes of Chaos-creatures… And yet, she was surprised to realize, if she did not return to Terra, she would miss Serena. Not the dangerously powerful moon princess, as she had come to know her from her mission files, but the bashful, determined Serena, as she had come to know her from their few months as teacher and student.

"I understand, Senshi Lanai, the danger of allowing one's own feelings to mingle with one's mission…even with one's adversary."

Lanai's head shot up. Forgetting protocol, she stared up into Galaxia's shadowy topaz eyes. Her breath was a boulder sinking to the bottom of her lungs; such an accusation by a High Council member would have her stripped of her tiara –

"Soothe yourself, Senshi Lanai." Galaxia smiled, the expression soft, understanding. "I am not here to punish you. Merely to guide you back to the correct path."

Lanai's muscles relaxed, but adrenaline still pumped through her. She tried to correct Galaxia's misconception. "I have not compromised the mission, High Sister. I understand our purpose and the necessity behind it – "

"Yet you seemed to have a certain faith in Endymion's reincarnation."

Lanai tensed all over again. "I understand now what he is capable of, High Sister – "

"Yes, I believe that you do, but I shall make sure." Galaxia leaned forward, her metal headdress clinking quietly. "The Endymion from the future sought a child, yes?"

Lanai tried to follow the logic through the unease and adrenaline that still muddled her. "Yes."

"The same child, five hundred years ago and twenty years ago. Entirely different times." Galaxia leaned yet closer still. "Begging the conclusion that the child he sought had traveled through time. What child do you know of who could possibly travel Chronos' plane?"

The answer was obvious. It was Lanai herself, after all, who had seen Darien leave the time plane with neither Sailor Pluto's assistance nor her permission.

"His child," he said.

"His child," asked Galaxia, "with whom?"

There was only one answer to this. There could only be one answer. "Serena – Serenity," Lanai corrected herself.

"A child with not only the power of the _Golden_ Crystal…but of the _Silver_ Crystal as well." Galaxia stepped away from Lanai, as though to make room for the full gravity of the concept to reach Lanai. "Endymion can destroy planets with a blink. Control whole planets' populations with a word. It is too much power for one being to hold. I would tell you a secret now, Senshi Lanai, but its telling requires a blood oath."

Galaxia's burning topaz gaze left no room for refusal, although Lanai was acutely aware of the danger posed by a blood oath. If she told the secret to another soul, her own was forfeit.

Wordlessly Lanai held out her hand, wrist up, and pulled the glove away from her pulsing arteries.

Swift as an eagle's beak, Galaxia's metal-gloved fingertip tore the skin open. She hooked her fingertip beneath a purple blood vessel, pulling it up out of Lanai's flesh and severing it. Blood turned red as it was exposed to the oxygen in the air. Lanai ignored the pain.

"Staunch it," ordered Galaxia, and Lanai pulled her glove back over the bloody mess, pressing down on the wound with her other hand. She stared at Galaxia, who gazed back.

"When Endymion was born," she said, "the High Council of that time realized that his potential for power was too great to risk allowing him to live."

She paused, and Lanai frowned slightly. "I know that already, High Sister Galaxia." After Endymion's seduction of Serenity led to the Fall, the decision had been made to kill his reincarnation in order to prevent him from seducing the princess again. "I was one of the assassins sent."

"No, you were one of the assassins sent to kill Endymion's _reincarnation_," corrected Galaxia. "I am speaking of a decision to assassinate Endymion during the Silver Millennium, before the Fall."

Along with the shock this time, Lanai felt a stab of self-righteousness. "But he had not yet done anything!"

"He had been born with a potential for power that rivaled that of the moon princess. The High Council could not in good conscience allow him to live. He endangered the rest of the universe merely by existing."

"But they could not know that – "

"Who was it that caused the Fall, Senshi Lanai? Who allowed the Chaos creature Metallia to topple the Silver Millennium and plunge us into a new round of war? Who brought about the death of billions?" She nodded without waiting for Lanai to answer. "Endymion."

"Along with Serenity," said Lanai, surprising herself with her vehemence. "High Sister, there is a saying on Terra, it takes two to tango. Serenity was party to the tryst; she had as much potential as Endymion, if not more, and yet the High Council did not decide to assassinate her."

"Didn't they?"

Lanai's mangled wrist throbbed. She gripped it tighter, staring at Galaxia's glittering eyes. "No."

"Yes."

"But she – she is the one who can defeat Chaos – "

"An achievement that will kill her as long as Endymion is not by her side." Galaxia's voice was inscrutable. "Serenity is too powerful a being to be left alive; eventually she would become another Chaos and subjugate our systems to her. You understand this? You know the stories of Chaos's origin?"

Yes. Yes, Lanai knew. All higher-level Senshi knew.

"The universe has a way of taking care of its mistakes. Chaos is an abomination, not meant to exist. Serenity came to be only out of a necessity for a being strong enough to defeat Chaos. And yet the universe has also given us a way to dispose of her once she has accomplished her purpose. Our only task is to ensure that Endymion is not with her.

"A task," Galaxia continued, beginning to pace, "in which we have apparently failed, if they have given birth to a child whose existence is even more against nature than that of its parents and whose existence has already begun to cause destruction. Two entirely destroyed planets of which we know and perhaps dozens more."

Galaxia pivoted on her sharp metal heel. Her eyes, just as sharp as those heels, jabbed into Lanai's. They narrowed, then softened. "I think, now, that you understand the true gravity of your mission."

Lanai sucked in a shaky breath. "Y-yes, High Sister."

"Good." Galaxia smiled sadly. "Understand, then, that another task has been added to your mission. If somehow you come across the child, you will disable it immediately and send word to me."

"What will you do with it?"

Galaxia's eyes narrowed. "If you do not know the answer to that question, then I do not think you are the proper Senshi for this mission, Sailor Lanai."

Lanai averted her eyes. "No. I understand, High Sister."

The skin around Galaxia's eyes softened; she placed her blood-wet fingers on Lanai's shoulder.

"To take a life is a difficult and contemptible decision to make, Senshi Lanai. But it one that we of the High Council have been forced to make, as leaders of the Senshi. After all, is that not why the Senshi were created?" Her voice was softer than Lanai had ever heard it before, vulnerable and almost bitter. "To bloody our souls so that the rest of the universe may keep theirs."

L

A/N: One thing you liked and two things you hated, please! (We're talking at least; feel free to exceed expectations.)


	21. Chapter 21

A/N:

A/N: Beware of language in this chapter. Sorry for not putting a warning in Chapter 19.

Another long author's note:

Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, especially Elen-Di, whose review was INSANE(ly wonderful) and the ever-warm elianthos! Nimbi-san, I'm very glad to know you're still alive and that you're dusting Kakera off – I REALLY missed it! And a deafening HURRAH as always for Jade-chan!

Next, at least two reviewers have requested a timeline of the series' events, so here is an attempt at an STC Sparknotes. Even if you think you remember everything, it may behoove you to skim this timeline because it may clear up some things about Lanai, Pluto, and Mercury (since I'm aware that a lot of people had trouble keeping them straight due to Lanai's naughty habit of impersonation.

IF YOU WANT TO _SKIP_ THE TIMELINE: Just scroll down until you find the usual chapter title and read from there.

IF YOU WANT TO_ READ_ THE TIMELINE: Be warned. It's _freaking long. _I split it up into Season 1, Fiore Arc, and Season 2, though, so just go to whichever part you need.

**(SEASON ONE)**

1. When Zoicite died, Beryl filled her corpse with her own aura, rendering her, in effect, a puppet. Zoicite told Moon that she will go to hell for the princess when she dies unless she joins her mistress (Beryl).

2. The Dark Kingdom discovered Moon's civilian identity from a handkerchief left behind at a battle site and used that knowledge to pretend in front of Luna and the other Senshi that Moon was their ally. Luna attacked Moon, and Tuxedo Mask saved her. Moon's growing relationship with Mask further convinced Luna and the other Senshi that Moon has betrayed them. They declared Serena free game.

3. Lita arrived and became friends with Serena. The gang went to the mall, where a youma threw Mask and Moon into a display of men's cologne. Serena and Darien discovered each other's identities. Later that day, Serena discovered that Asanuma had a crush on Rei.

4. At an attack on the arcade, Lita transformed into Sailor Jupiter. Ami, then Luna, attempt to turn her against Serena after telling her that Serena is Sailor Moon. Lita was hurt that Serena had not told her but blew both Ami and Luna off.

5. The Dark Kingdom began to attack simultaneously throughout the city. The youma that gave Mars and Mercury mental disorders returned, affecting Mask as well with a case of kleptomania. When Mask touched Moon's brooch (attempting to steal it), her old tiara exploded and was replaced by a new one. She used the attack "Moon Twilight Flash" to vaporize the youma and heal Mask, Mars, and Mercury of their mental disorders. To her disappointment, healing her fellow Senshi has not removed their belief that she has betrayed them. And, unbeknownst to her, her attack also healed Malachite of Beryl's brainwashing – he now had all his memories of the Silver Millennium (except the princess's identity).

6. In order to keep Malachite loyal to her, Beryl revealed an object that she has kept in Metallia's cavern: the thousand year-old body of Sailor Venus. Using Metallia and energy that the youma have gathered, she revived Venus's body and uses the two lovers as leverage against each other to get rid of the Senshi and find the Silver Crystal.

7. Like Malachite, Minako had all her memories of the Silver Millennium except those of her princess and the prince (thanks to a memory block by Pluto). This meant that she had no memory of Sailor Moon or Tuxedo Mask; thus she saw them both as threats to her princess, especially because Moon may be a High Senshi. Believing that her Senshi also retained their memories and powers from the Silver Millennium, she was sorely disappointed when she discovers the truth and when, furthermore, Lita rejected her in order to fight with Sailor Moon. Venus attacked both Moon and Mask, nearly killing Moon.

8. When Mask healed automatically from Venus's attack with golden sparks, his identity as Prince Endymion's reincarnation is revealed to Venus, Beryl, and Malachite. Beryl commanded Venus to bring Mask to her.

9. Minako told Lita that Prince Endymion, who had seduced the Moon Princess in sheer disregard of a prophecy foretelling destruction if they came together, killed the princess during the fall of the Silver Millennium. Then she told her that Darien was Endymion's reincarnation.

10. Serena snuck out to deliver a prom ticket to Rei's school locker. On her way home, Venus attacked her. When Lita found out about this, she realized that she shouldn't anything that Venus has told her.

11. Lita found out that Serena has been having dreams about dying in which she calls out for "Endymion." She told Sere and Dare what Minako said about Endymion being the Earth Prince who killed and seduced the princess but not that he may be Darien.

12. On prom night, Lita went with Motoki. Serena, who is going so that she can show Darien that she's safe on her own and he can go to Yale, went disguised by the Luna Pen. Without telling her, Darien went to the prom as well, intending only to keep an eye on her. Instead, Miss Lanai dragged them together. Rei also went to the prom, believing that Asanuma was the secret admirer who left her the ticket, but stupid Asanuma recognized Serena's handwriting and told her it must have been a joke. Rei ran off.

13. Venus went on stage and demanded that Moon or Mask show themselves. Dare dragged Sere outside, where Zoicite attacked and dragged them to Beryl in the Dark Kingdom.

14. Beryl revealed to Darien that he is Endymion's reincarnation. He killed her. Zoicite recovered control of her own body and killed herself before Metallia could possess it to hurt her prince. Metallia possessed Beryl's body instead and consumed Serena's brooch. The flash of light from the brooch's destruction blinded Darien's eyes. Metallia absorbed Serena, then Darien.

15. Sailor Lanai entered the time plane to order Sailor Pluto to restore Serena's memories so that she could use the Silver Crystal against Metalli. Pluto refused because the princess would be in too much danger once the crystal was revealed.

16. Instead, Pluto transported Sere and Dare onto the time plane and thrust Darien into a future where the Senshi fought the Dead Moon Circus, whose mirrors could extract the souls of their victims. The Golden Crystal was extracted from Darien's body. Pluto brought him back to the time plane.

17. Luna, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and then Venus entered the Dark Kingdom through Zoicite's portal. When Mars aims an attack at him, Venus tried to throw herself in front of it. She failed. Malachite died; Metallia possesses his body like Beryl possessed Zoicite's before. The possessed body attacked Venus but was destroyed by falling rock. Luna, Mercury, and Mars, now believing Venus to be a traitor, leave her to die in the collapsing cave. Jupiter carried the dying Venus from the caves, and Venus rambled deliriously about Pluto, the princess killing herself, and stabbing the sword into the princess herself.

18. Back on the time plane, Darien transports both himself and Serena back into Metallia, shocking both Pluto and Lanai. With the Golden Crystal, he destroyed Metallia and the Dark Kingdom.

19. With Venus dead and the Dark Kingdom gone, Rei and Ami both left Juuban. Darien's blindness remained while the severe flesh wounds Serena suffered healed into silver scars across her body.

**(FIORE ARC**)

1. Darien and Serena's summer so far has consisted of hanging out in the arcade, watching Buji, and getting used to life without sight and with scars. Darien has discovered his ability – psychometry – to attain phantom sensations of objects that he touches and practices with it frequently. Serena has worn long sleeves to cover her scars all summer.

2. On a day spent with Buji, Darien discovered Luna's corpse.

3. Rei's grandfather's body was found in the temple. He had been dead for at least a week. The gang has not been able to find either Rei or Ami since they disappeared.

4. On the way home from a group outing, Motoki and Asanuma found two jewel-like rocks.

5. Kisenian Blosom and Fiore attempted to conquer Darien's mind at his apartment. He escaped them by going to Elysion.

6. Fiore appeared at the arcade and almost managed to get a grip on Darien's mind. Serena broke it, and Fiore left.

7. Darien told Serena and Lita about the "imaginary friend" Fiore he had when he was a child and about some of the strange dreams he had during that time.

8. Asanuma and Motoki have begun to manifest powers of fire and electricity.

9. On their way home after Serena's surprise birthday party, Fiore and Kisenian attacked Serena and Darien. Fiore aimed a lethal attack at Serena only to hit Darien; he vanished to Kisenian's comet with Darien. Darien managed to give the Golden Crystal to Serena before he was taken away.

10. Kisenian's flower creatures preyed upon the city. Without her brooch, Serena was able to do little to help Lita fight them off.

11. Rei, in isolation, foresaw the arrival of Alin and Anne with the Makaiju.

12. Serena fell asleep with the Golden Crystal in her hands. In her sleep she went to Elysion, where she found Helios in his unicorn form. In her presence, he was able to regain his human form.

13. Darien found them both in Elysion. Helios told them that Kisenian was sent by Chaos to assassinate Darien so that he could not be with the princess and the princess would not be able to defeat Chaos. He also told them about the High Senshi, the oldest and most powerful Senshi in the universe who command over all Senshi and by whom the Moon Princess was to have been trained in order to fulfill the prophecy of her defeating Chaos.

14. Darien took Serena to her dreamflower in Elysion. When she touched it, its petals opened, and within was revealed a new brooch with which she transformed into Sailor Moon again for the first time since fighting Beryl. Although the dreamflower was Serena's, both Serena and Darien's wishes affected the brooch: Serena had always wanted shorts, and the new fuku had them beneath the skirt; Darien had wanted an appearance that made Moon less recognizable as Serena, and thus her hairstyle was changed from odangoes to a crown of braids around her head. In the transformation, a glamour also concealed Serena's silver scars.

15. Kisenian's true form was a weed in Elysion that entwined itself around dreamflowers. Darien stayed in Elysion to try to find Fiore's dreamflower and the Kisenian weed to detach the two from each other, breaking Kisenian's hold on Fiore. Moon left with Helios, riding his Pegasus form back to her body in her bedroom. Together with Jupiter they flew to Kisenian's comet.

16. As the Makaiju began to put out its roots in Earth's soil, Rei incinerated half of it with a fire attack. Then an attack from the opposite direction completely destroyed it; the source of the attack was Sailor Uranus.

17. Kisenian's attempts to permeate his mind while he was unconscious on the comet triggered Darien to relive his earliest memories. The memories he recalled were of waking up in the hospital, of blood-filled dreams, and of hallucination that were actually attempts by Sailor Pluto and the High Senshi to assassinate Endymion's reincarnation. He recalled Endymion's presence taking control of his body to ward off these assassination attempts.

18. On the comet Fiore was about to kill Moon when Kisenian was abruptly repulsed from him. Darien broke out of the crystal in which he had been imprisoned, Kisenian's weed from Elysion in his hand.

19. Fiore explained to Darien how Kisenian had discovered him with the energy-infused rose which Darien had given to him as a child. In Darien's distraction, Kisenian was able to escape his grip and took forcible control of both Fiore's mind and body.

20. Defying Kisenian, Fiore impaled himself on Helios's unicorn horn before he could hurt Darien or Sailor Moon.

21. With Fiore dead, Kisenian possessed Sailor Moon. The purity of Serena's mind, along with the intricacies of Pluto's mind block and Serena's concealed past life gave Kisenian great ecstasy. Before she could act on her discovery that the body she inhabited belonged to the Moon Princess, Darien completely incinerated her true form in Elysion.

22. Darien returned from Elysion and stopped the comet from entering Earth's atmosphere by lifting water from the Pacific Ocean into the exosphere, where it froze to the comet and stopped its momentum. Helios took Jupiter and an unconscious Serena back to Serena's home, where her family waited for her to arrive at her surprise Sweet Sixteen party.

23. Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune bring an unwilling Rei into their fold.

24. Asanuma sensed the events occurring on the comet but was unable to understand what the sensations signified.

25. In Elysion, Fiore's body dissolved into rose petals. Helios pointed out that Darien had just defeated one of Chaos's most powerful warriors and gained the ability to enter Elysion not only with his mind but also his body. Darien cared only that Kisenian's victims were aware as she controlled their minds.

26. While Kisenian possessed her mind, Serena also saw much of Kisenian's mind. Now aware of the prophecy that Kisenian had known, it was no longer possible for Serena to ignore that Darien must be with the Moon Princess, no matter how much he seemed to currently dislike her. Serena felt defiled by Kisenian's possession and guilted by her discovery. She began to distance herself from Darien, both when he came that night to take her to Elysion and in the days and weeks that followed.

27. Motoki and Asanuma discovered each other's new powers.

**(SEASON TWO**)

1. The school year has begun, and Darien and Serena still haven't spoken to each other since the Kisenian incident.

2. Haruka, Michiru, and Rei have moved into Juuban.

3. While Serena was minding Buji and the dress shop for Mayuko, she met a girl named Hotaru whose body was as scarred as her own.

4. Darien's battle and psychometric skills have immensely improved after a summer of training in Elysion with Helios. The priest told Darien that he heard word on the wind that the Shittenou had returned. Darien rushed to check on Serena. She felt him and told him that she was avoiding him. He agreed with her that she should. Both misunderstood each other's reasons for what they said.

5. Serena's schedule on the first day of school showed that she had an art class with Miss Lanai. Unnerved and eager to change the mistake, she went to the guidance counselor's office, colliding with Darien along the way. Darien followed her into the counselor's office, growling when he discovered that Lanai lied to the guidance counselor in order to have Serena in a class. Darien's reaction instigated Serena to insist on keeping the class with Lanai.

6. Serena found herself rethinking her decision when she arrived for Art and found that she was the only one in the class. Then Miss Lanai, her French accent gone, revealed that she knew that Serena was Sailor Moon.

7. Lanai introduces herself as Sailor Pluto. She relieved Serena's fears that she was a member of the High Senshi sent to do something to the princess when she told her that the reason no one remembered Sailor Moon was because she had been the Moon Princess's top-secret shadow bodyguard during the Silver Millennium. She also told Serena, however, that during the Silver Millennium she had seduced Prince Endymion and, because of that relationship, been absent during the Fall and failed to protect the princess.

8. Lanai begins to train Serena in extensive sparring sessions, ostensibly to strengthen her Senshi attacks to improve her ability to protect the princess.

9. Pluto forbade Haruka and Michiru to search for the princess on their own but to focus on finding Saturn instead.

10. Asanuma and Motoki – the former more zealously than the latter –have also been training with their own powers.

11. Darien threatened Miss Lanai – who threatened him back and told him to stay away from Serena.

12. Lanai told Serena that the Senshi cannot remember or find the princess because she is afraid that the Senshi will betray her (again). Serena progressed to nonverbal attacks.

13. Rei told Michiru and Haruka about Luna and Venus's suspicions about Serena. The two Outer Senshi directed Rei to search for both Sailor Saturn and the princess with her spiritual powers and to leave Sailor Moon to them.

14. At his monthly doctor's visit, Darien was unnerved by Dr. Tomoe, who substituted for his usual doctor. Tomoe seemed overly curious about the condition of his still-blind and golden eyes.

15. Haruka approached Asanuma about Rei at a campaign fundraiser to make sure that Rei hadn't attempted to contact him since returning to Tokyo.

16. A disguised Sailor Mercury observed Motoki and Lita at the arcade to relay surveillance of their current power levels to Sailor Pluto.

17. Sick of being left out of the loop and not knowing the truth about Rei, Asanuma confronted Serena with his knowledge of her alter identity. Their whispered, heated conversation sent rumors about their relationship rushing through the school. Darien attacked Asanuma at the arcade after school, and Asanuma demanded answers from both of them about their "extracurricular activities." The fight continued into the park, growing in murderous intent, until Asanuma revealed his abilities to manipulate fire. Only Buji's arrival stopped the two boys from severely injuring each other.

18. Rei, Michiru, and Haruka sensed Asanuma's use of his powers, and Rei attempted to sneak off before being foiled by Haruka.

19. During the weekend, Asanuma recognized Rei getting into a car with Haruka and Michiru. A car chase ensued in which Asanuma attempted to stop their car by shredding a tire with one of his crystals. A gust of Haruka's wind sent the crystal shooting back at Asanuma instead. He lost control of his car when the crystal went through the windshield and lost consciousness as well.

20. Mikai, who was at the orphanage with Darien and now works in a garage, came to tow Asanuma's wrecked Porsche. Darien, who didn't believe that the girl Asanuma had seen was really Rei, went with Mikai afterward to have coffee.

21. After Michiru and Haruka told Pluto that Lanai has sunk her claws into Serena, Pluto sent Mercury to trash Lanai's classroom as a warning to her. When Serena came to train that day, Lanai met her outside the door and took her outside to train instead.

22. While wandering around the district in search of Saturn or the princess, Rei was met by Sailor Mercury. Rei could not sense Ami's presence in the Senshi's aura, and the Senshi refused to answer her question about what had happened to Ami. Instead, she said that they would meet again soon. That night, Haruka told Rei that she was not Rei Hino but Sailor Mars, that she was possessing the body of Rei Hino, as all the other Senshi did to their civilian identities.

23. When Darien went to inform Helios that Motoki and Asanuma were the returned Shittenou, Helios appeared frightened of him. He asked him to stay away from Sailor Moon.

24. Serena made virtually no progress in her attacks, unable to bypass Pluto's block. Instead, her dreams of dying only grew more vivid.

25. Lanai told Serena that she was going to America to seek out Senshi. In truth, she was responding to the summons that the High Senshi Council had sent. Before leaving, she told Serena not to transform and to stay away from Darien.

26. To find out more about Serena, Michiru managed to become Lanai's substitute teacher. Lanai left drawing assignments intended to continue chipping away at Pluto's memory block.

27. Serena began to train by using the Luna Pen to transform into Sailor Moon. One night, an unseen attacker sliced her leg severely – Sailor Uranus, unknown to her. Aware only of a wind-manipulating presence, Tuxedo Mask arrived and wrenched control of the wind away from Uranus. When Moon said that he had to stay away from her because she endangered the princess, he told her that he didn't love the princess. He got as far as saying "I love" before he was cut off by Rini landing on their heads.

28. Darien's hostile reaction to Rini unsettled Moon, with whom (in civilian form) Rini went home. Serena tried to convince herself as she went to sleep that Darien changing was a good thing.

29. Rini ran away. No sooner did Serena track her down than a youma attack them both. At the same time, unnatural thunder and lightning filled the sky as the Black Moon's spaceship entered the planet's atmosphere.

30. Tuxedo Mask dispatched the youma. He also summoned a humungous downpour to shove the spaceship – to them, still an unidentified mass – out of the sky. He kept a steady rainfall going to keep the spaceship down.

31. During the day that the three spend together, Rini told Sere and Dare that Asanuma was her relative and she had come to stay with him because a terrorist group called the Black Moon was after her in order to get to her parents. When they got back to Darien's apartment after shopping, while Rini was in the bathroom changing, Darien kissed Serena. Rini emerged from the bathroom, cutting off the kiss, and Serena fled with the little girl.

32. Lita has begun to feel intensely hostile, especially toward Motoki. Her hair has also begun to turn green. When Serena arrived with Rini, she helped the little girl dye her hair back to brown with some of the hair dye that she had been using. She also transformed in front of Rini, prompting the child to agree to stay with Lita instead of Serena.

33. The Black Moon ship required major repairs after Darien's thunderstorm. The Wiseman opened a vortex into which the ship could be moved to await repairs, but any repairs of the ship's vital crystals require large amounts of energy. A youma was sent out to attain it.

34. The effort of manipulating rain for such a long period of time drove Darien into an acute and dangerous state of dehydration, his body mirroring the sky as it wept water. He fell deeply unconscious.

35. Serena transformed to dust the Black Moon youma. In doing so, she sensed Darien through the rope and rushed to find him. When she found his unresponsive body, she called 911.

36. At Haruka and Michiru's house, Rei was also unconscious, her body flickering between the form of Rei Hino and that of Sailor Mars.

37. Lita left Rini at her apartment to go fight a youma. Moon, also at the battle, seemed preoccupied and examined a flower at the scene that was actually a transformed Rini, though neither of them knew it at the time. Afterward, Serena returned to Darien's hospital room.

38. When Darien woke up, he told Serena that the reason that he had kissed her was to figure out if his feelings for her were of a romantic nature. He told her that they weren't.

39. When Motoki tried to talk to Lita at school the next day, she nearly killed him with a bolt of lightning. Her hair turned green, and the gang – minus Asanuma – went to her apartment to figure out what has happening. They couldn't figure anything out, and Darien worried privately that the same separate consciousness that has been rising in his own body has begun to affect Lita.

40. Furious that Lanai's interference had begun to erode Serena's memory blocks and, in turn, those of Rei, Lita and Darien, Sailor Pluto went to reinforce Rei's memory block.

41. Asanuma spoke with Rei's father about the still-missing girl and discovered that he could transform his clothes by using the jewel-like stone that Motoki had found and given to him.

42. Rubeus and the Four Sisters were sent to Earth to gather energy. Prisma and Avery attacked Motoki and Darien. Lita saved Motoki; the two sisters retreated.

43. Disguised as a teenager, Rini went to school with Serena.

44. Sailor Pluto entered Lita's mind to reinforce her memory block. Then she moved on to Darien to rebuild his memory block as well.

45. Prisma attacked the arcade, where Motoki was keeping an eye on Rini. Prisma realized who Rini was and was only prevented from taking her by Sailor Moon's arrival.

46. Asanuma arrived and saved both Moon and Rini from Prisma and the youma, both of whom escaped. Moon's grave injuries caused her transformation to flicker, revealing Serena's identity to Rini.

47. With Toki and Rini, Asanuma took the unconscious Serena to Darien's apartment.

48. Their arrival interrupted Pluto's attempt to renew Darien's mind-block; she vanished. Time, which she had suspended in Darien's apartment, resumed, and Darien used the rope to trigger Serena's transformation and healing abilities. Then he and Motoki went to get Lita.

49. Lita's mind-block had been successfully reconstructed by Pluto; she did not try to kill Motoki.

50. Asanuma denied that Rini was his relative; she revealed that she was from the future, where she lived with Asanuma. She proved this to Asanuma by telling him about a portrait of Rei he had in the future that he had only begun to plan recently.

51. Rini went home with Serena; Darien used his powers of mind-manipulation to brainwash the Tsukinos into believing that Rini was their cousin. That night, Rini tells Serena that the Senshi and their civilian forms are not the same people: the Senshi's souls actually possess Terrans' bodies.

52. Like Lita, Rei's memory-block was successfully restored. With the disappearance of her dreams of the Silver Millennium, her angsty feelings of being unwanted returned in full force.

53. When Serena told the gang what Rini had said, they decide – except Serena – that the princess committed suicide during the Fall . Because the Senshi share a bond with her, when they die, they will all go to hell for the princess's sin.

54. Serena told Lita about Miss Lanai and also told her all that Lanai had told her about Sailor Moon's betrayal of the princess.

55. Relieved by sharing her secret with Lita, Serena made up with Darien.

56. Darien went to Elysion to tell Helios about Rini and the new youma. Helios told Darien about Sailor Pluto, the guardian of time, and told him that she was probably reincarnated with the other Senshi, leaving the time realm unguarded, allowing Rini to travel to the past.

57. When Darien left Elysion, he returned to Serena's windowsill. Both teenagers' bodies morphed into those of their previous incarnations. They began to kiss.

58. Mercury told Pluto that her attempt to strengthen the prince's memory block actually weakened the block instead and that Darien's proximity to Serena and the emergence of his flash-form triggered the emergence of Serena's flash-form. She pointed out that while the Senshi bonds, which were based on the bond between the prince and princess, could be controlled, the prince and princess's could not.

59. Pluto left the time realm to separate Darien and Serena, causing their flash-forms to be submerged once more.

60. The next day, on Pluto's orders, Michiru caused a rain to fall and separate Serena and Darien when they got too close to each other.

61. The gang picked Rini up from school and discovered that Buji's mother was pregnant.

62. Asanuma, Motoki, and Mask have been handling the youma that appear to build Numa and Toki's powers.

63. A suspiciously downed stop sign caused Serena to meet Haruka Tennou as well as Darien's orphanage friend Mikai. Haruka came to meet Serena after school the next day. Rini was hostile to him and angry at Serena for reproaching her behavior toward him. She ran – right into a youma attack.

64. Rini's transformation into a flower and Catzi's calling her "princess" made Serena realize who Rini was: the daughter of Darien and the moon princess. She made Rini tell Darien.

65. Finding out that Rini was his daughter with the moon princess caused Darien to lose control of his powers. He began to transform uncontrollably into different Earth animals and fled to Elysion, where he attacked Helios. With Rini, Serena traveled into Elysion and was able to bring Darien back into his human body by using their connection through the rope. After he had been returned to normal, as he slept, Serena told him that she loved him…but was he actually asleep?

66. Pluto was angered by Rini revealing her identity, which caused the amount of possible futures to multiply immensely. Mercury pointed out that Rini's immense power as the daughter of the prince and princess had allowed her to travel through the time plane without Pluto's help or permission.

67. Sailor Lanai arrived at the High Council headquarters, where she was interrogated about Darien and Pluto. They told her about two planets that had been destroyed hundreds of years apart but both by the same thing: a golden-eyed man who sought a child. The High Council told her that these discoveries mean that Darien has or will ally with Chaos.

68. A prophecy in Elysion some time ago informed Helios of the same thing that the High Council told Lanai, that Darien would side with Chaos. When Darien awoke in Elysion, Helios finally told him about the prophecy. Darien swore to himself that he would stop himself from fulfilling the prophecy.

69. Darien's discovery of the prophecy caused the possible futures to multiply and change once again. Pluto agreed to permit Mercury to take care of Rei so that Uranus and Neptune can focus on preventing Darien and Serena from coming together.

70. Back in the real world, Lita was even more hostile to Darien than before. Serena took Rini home and tried to cheer her up with manga and sweets.

71. For a large sum of money, Dr. Tomoe agreed to let Senator Hino use his daughter Hotaru as a stand-in for Rei in order to help him win elections. What will Tomoe do with the money?

72. Rini told Serena that she had lived with Asanuma almost her whole life because her parents were away fighting Chaos. Serena vowed that nothing would make her leave her kids.

73. Serena went on a date with Haruka. Darien came while she was gone and attempted to apologize to Rini. Rini saw right through him, stating that he had only apologized because he knew that Serena would want him to, not because he was actually sorry. She rejected him and told him that Serena was on a date. Darien retreated to Elysion to control his anger.

74. Sailor Galaxia, the lead councilor of the High Council, bound Lanai to secrecy with a blood oath before telling her that both Endymion and Serenity were targeted for assassination by the High Senshi because they had too much power to be allowed to live.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Twenty-One: Fire and Ice

L

Three years ago –

"Yo, Mikai! Check out this car, man!"

Mikai made a final turn with the tire iron and glanced up. Sweat trickled into his eye. He swiped it and squinted at the car on the lift.

Then he let out a whistle.

A fine, shiny red Mustang glimmered in the left of the garage. Mikai didn't see a scratch on the baby. Drawn as though by pheromones, he rocked to his feet and made his way toward the beauty, circling it.

"I don't see a damn thing wrong with her. What's she in for – " He reached the front of the car. The rest of his sentence evaporated on his tongue.

"I know, right?" said Nakamura feelingly from where he stood beside him. "A damn shame!"

Mikai shook his head, tugging at an earring. "You got that right."

The whole front passenger end of the Mustang was blown in, the sides curled and bent and black. The front passenger tire was little more than a smear of black grease on the crumpled hubcap.

"What the hell happened?" Mikai crouched, inspecting the damage to the other front tire. It was almost as bad as the passenger side. The axle on this baby was shot.

"Youma attack, the dude said." Nakamura jerked an oily thumb over his shoulder. "The guy's right over there. You can find out. Boss wants you to fill out the paperwork, anyway."

Mikai scrubbed the heels of his palms down his coveralls and made his way over to the office. He saw the back of the man sitting in one of the office's plastic chairs; he had glossy black hair, a suit jacket on, and a briefcase at his side. Mikai snorted with displeasure. Why had the boss sent him to deal with a businessman?

Mikai opened the door into the relative quiet of the office, and let it fall shut behind him. "Excuse me, sir, are you the Mustang's owner?"

A thick book sat in the businessman's lap. He slid a sheaf of papers into it and looked up through reading glasses.

Mikai realized that he had been mistaken. This wasn't an adult, just a kid still in his school uniform, not much younger than himself. He was wearing the uniform like a mandate to rule, though. His expression was familiar to Mikai: definitely a student government type.

"Yes," said the kid in response to Mikai's question. "I own the vehicle. Is it salvageable?"

"I'm not going to _equivocate_," said Mikai, having a little fun with the kid and his entrance exam vocabulary. But the kid's bland expression didn't change, the little booger. "The damage is extensive. Not irreparable, just expensively extensive. We'll have to order a new interior, replace the front axle and tires as well as the engine and possibly a new transmission, not to mention all the other crap that goes under the hood."

He filled out the paperwork as he spoke, checking the little squares for each needed part and repair. "You're also gonna need a new paint job, which means ordering in the same shade of paint, which may or may not exist anymore depending on whether or not your car's a special edition. Which, if my eyes did not deceive me, it is." He looked up from the paper in front of him. "A 325i, right?"

The kid nodded.

"Which means you're going to need a new paint job for the whole car if you want it to match because they don't make paint that color anymore." Mikai checked in another box, then straightened up to look at it. More than half the squares on the sheet were filled in. He whistled and looked at the kid. "Hope you have one hell of a parttime job."

"Hell just about describes it," said the kid. No small amount of irony tinted his voice. He fished a checkbook out of his uniform blazer. "I'll pay up front."

Mikai handed him the receipt.

The kid checked the repair shop name on the receipt as he wrote the check out. Mikai glanced at the signature on the check as the boy handed it to him. He keyed a few buttons on the cash register, then paused.

"Hang on a second," he said slowly, to himself, then – "Darien Shields?"

The kid lifted an eyebrow, and suddenly Mikai knew why he'd seemed familiar.

"Darien Shields!" he exclaimed. "You used to kick my butt in Mortal Kombat! At the orphanage, remember?"

"Ah." The high-schooler's expression cleared, though his brows remained aloft. "I'm sorry, Mi – Mita – ?"

"Mikai," supplied Mikai, pressing the key to process the check. "How's life been treating you?"

Darien slid his checkbook back into his blazer pocket. "I've had better days. But I'm sure you could tell that already, looking at my car."

"Life had to have been treating you pretty damn well for quite a while to get you a set of wheels like that," returned Mikai. The check emerged from the processor. "Driver's license…? Thanks. What were you doing that close to a youma attack anyway?"

"It wasn't like I _knew_ the youma was going to make an appearance." Darien wore an annoyed frown.

Mikai smiled a little to himself. "Where was it?"

Darien signed the slip of paper that Mikai slid to him across the counter. "The park."

Mikai grinned. "Shields, man, how often does a youma hit the park?"

Reluctantly, a corner of Darien's lips turned up. "Point taken."

"Pretty soon the insurance companies are gonna be selling youma policies." Mikai put all the paperwork in the filing cabinet. "Okay, the car should be finished two Tuesdays from now. You'll get a phone call, probably from me. Keep this paper, and don't lose it. Show it to the guy in the office when you come in." He paused. "If you do lose it, just ask for me, and I'll vouch for you."

"I won't lose it," said Darien, slipping it into his pocket. "But thanks.

Mikai shrugged and grinned. "Whatever, man. Just saying. You need a phone to call a ride?"

"Thank you, but no."

"Okay, then." Mikai opened the door, letting the deafening racket of the shop roar into the quiet space. "Nice seeing you again, man."

Darien nodded. "Yeah. You, too."

L

" … in other news, the Minato ward was rocked by a small earthquake this morning, the fourth in a series of seismic disturbances in that area in the past few weeks. No damage was done, and while scientists at Tokyo's Seismic Activity Center have yet to find a reason for the tremors, they assure the public that if the disturbances continue, they are unlikely to exceed a four on the Richter scale. Nevertheless, inhabitants of the Minato ward should take precautions…"

Mikai yawned and stretched lazily. Then frowned as he realized that the surface beneath him was much more unyielding than his mattress had any right to be.

He cracked open his eyes and saw that he had somehow once again managed to roll off the bed and onto the floor while he slept.

A groan escaped him. His body was beginning to ache from the numerous bruises with which these midnight falls apparently left him. Maybe it was time for him to check into a sleep clinic…

L

The cold entered her dreams first. Like phantoms a white fog swooped in, shrouding the feverish maelstrom of spirits that whirled around her.

Then came the singing. And with the singing, she was pulled to wakefulness.

"Hush, little Senshi, don't say a word, Big Sister Mercury has returned… Oh, you're up. Excellent."

Rei blinked little flakes of crystallized sweat from her eyelashes and stared.

"I told you it wouldn't be long, didn't it?" The blue-haired woman sitting on the foot of her bed smiled. Then her brow creased, and she touched a gloved finger to her chin. "Although I must say I am disappointed. Your sensitivity was so high last time we spoke, and this time I was here for half an hour before you realized my presence."

Rei sensed it well enough now. An icy burn in her skull, not unlike the pain from cold water touching a cavitied tooth. And a blue aura, smooth as marble, completely still. There was no conflict or uncertainty swirling within it to make it move. It was wrong. No one's aura was like that, not even the other Senshi's.

Not quite stagnant…frozen.

"You're still not Ami," Rei heard herself croak.

"No. Well." The Senshi uncrossed her booted legs, then crossed them again. "Ami's not quite ready to emerge yet."

"_You_'re not ready for her to emerge yet." Rei meant her voice to be an accusation, but it came out weak as a breath, merely weary instead of antagonizing.

Sailor Mercury laughed. Rei winced against the sound, as though it was snow being shoved down the back of her shirt.

"No one is ready to open that bundle of psychotic insecurity, dear Rei," Sailor Mercury informed her when she had finished laughing. "Even _I_ was barely able to keep the child from a complete mental disossiation."

"Was," repeated Rei, staring harder into the unmoving aura. Focusing on auras was difficult because she saw them best by looking at them out of the corner of her eye, and the Mercurian Senshi kept shifting slightly, as though she knew that Rei was trying to examine her and wanted none of it. "Are you what happened when she did break down?"

"I'm what happened to stop her from breaking down." Sailor Mercury hopped to her feet. Rei's bed did not tremor even a tad. "A fate that was not so far from being your own, darling-heart Rei."

Rei could not help it; she flinched.

"That frightens you," Mercury observed. "And that is why you are still Rei Hino." She smiled. "For now."

Rei slid out from her covers, to the floor on the opposite side of the bed from the other Senshi. "Why are you here?"

Sailor Mercury smiled again and held out her gloved hand to Rei. "To make sure that you remain Rei Hino."

L

"Ruka."

Haruka threw the mail on the front hall table and followed Michiru's voice to the dining room. "Yeah?"

Michiru's usually undisturbed voice was tight. "Apparently our custody has been rescinded."

Haruka followed Michiru's aqua gaze to the colossal aquarium that lined the north wall.

"Damn."

The water inside the aquarium was frozen solid, the tropical fish suspended in mid-blink. In the condensation that blanketed the glass exterior, the sigils for Pluto and Mars had been drawn with a finger.

L

"No WAY." Lita grabbed Serena by the shoulders, torn between grinning madly and giving the little blonde a good shake for not telling her earlier! "Why didn't you CALL me?"

"SHHH!" Serena glanced around at the slanted looks they were receiving from their homeroom classmates.

Lita followed her eyes. "Hey, busybodies," she said loudly. "Girl-squealing going on here. Can we get some privacy?"

A few chuckles were heard; people went back to their own conversations; and Lita turned back around to spear Serena on her expectant green-eyed stare.

"I was GOING to," insisted Serena. "But I was still worried about Rini, and I didn't want to…you know… in front of her after the…you know?"

Lita rolled her eyes at Serena's vague phrasing. "I KNOW," she said meaningfully. "How's she holding up?"

Serena regarded Lita for a moment, her lips pressed together hesitantly.

"What?" Lita interpreted her hesitation correctly. "Just because she's his kid doesn't mean I have a beef with HER."

"Well, it kinda seemed like it," said Serena, trying to drain her voice of the accusation that automatically filled it. "Could you show her? That you don't not like her?"

Lita tried to ignore the bubble of guilt squeezing through her. "Yeah, sure." She flapped her hand. "Now, about this date…"

"It wasn't a _date_…"

"Serena, do I have to pull out a dictionary and show you the definition of 'date?' " Lita faked getting up to go to the bookshelf. Serena threw an eraser her, and she sat back down. "The guy picked you up and took you out. Dress pants and high heels were involved. It was a date."

"Oh, so what are all those things you and Motoki do, then?" returned Serena. "I haven't seen Motoki in any high heels."

Lita snorted, putting her hand to her forehead and shaking her head. "You're SO asking to be strangled, you know that?"

"I don't ask," said Serena, narrowing her eyes to look tough. "I _demand_."

Lita snatched Serena's lunch from her desk and secreting it safely behind her back. "I _demand_ details about your date. Spill, or Obento-chan gets it."

"Lita!" Serena squealed, making the expected lunge for her ransomed lunchbox, but inside, she was thoughtful. Lita had been uncharacteristically enthusiastic about anything to do with Haruka.

_What, and you're complaining_? demanded her mind. _You'd think you'd appreciate having a guy you best friend doesn't wanna kill. Unless you're just looking for another excuse to go back to Darien._

L

"Hey."

Serena looked up as Darien sat at the cafeteria table across from her.

"Hi," she replied. Although she was still shivering from being out in the cold during gym, she felt a bead of perspiration slide down her neck.

There was no reason for her to tell him about her "date" with Haruka – officially. But it felt like she was hiding something from him if she didn't. At the same time, telling him would seem suspicious, like she was trying to make him jealous or something. Or like she still had feelings for him. Which she did – but no one was supposed to think that, even her.

As she watched his long fingers unscrew the cap from his soda, she felt her mind beginning to muddle. Stubbornly, she shook her head and looked away, out the window, digging her mouth into her palm and her elbow into the tabletop. Where WAS everyone, anyway?

"Do you think they forgot we were eating inside today?" she asked Darien, kicking her feet nervously back and forth beneath the table and still studiously avoiding looking at him.

"Maybe," he said noncommittally, tearing open a ketchup packet. If he noticed her legs' antics, he did not show it. "You had gym with Asanuma, where did he go?"

"He had to turn in a makeup assignment." Serena tried to match Darien's casual tone. Why WAS he being so casual, anyway? Darien was usually either one end of the spectrum of the other: slyly mellow (though with a healthy helping of suspicion) or rabidly enraged, and this didn't seem to be either.

She cleared her throat. "So, did Helios say anything more yesterday?"

"Not really."

He bit into his fish sandwich. She supposed the fact that he was eating was a good sign, at least; she hadn't seen him ingest anything but caffeined beverages in the past few weeks.

"He had me practice transforming only my hands."

"Oh, really?" Serena perked up and looked at him at last, distracted from her worry by intense curiosity. Now that she knew she could bring him back to being human if he ever did lose himself again, the idea of his transforming into different animals filled her with an almost fangirlish fascination. "What kind of animals?"

Darien's eyes met hers for the first time that day. Even though he was blind she could always feel when he was focusing on her, narrowing his senses to converge on her body, like the aura of an attack aimed at her.

He set down his sandwich. "I appear to be partial to wolves," he said carefully. "Or canine creatures in general. My hands kept turning into paws."

"Oh!" Serena clapped her hands, eyes asparkle. "Do you realize what this means? You could be the most realistic-looking Inuyasha cosplayer ever!"

Darien blinked as Serena went off into a babble about ears and fangs and claws. Then he picked up his sandwich again. Serena in Chatter Mode was familiar territory. He could handle that without turning into a bloodthirsty animal.

So, when she paused in her jabber to breathe, he inquired, "And Inuyasha would be…?"

Serena's jaw dropped. The breath she had just taken whooshed out again as though she had been punched in the gut.

"Inuyasha…_would_…_BE_?" she echoed. Very slowly and very dangerously. To her,

as well, this – Darien in Superior Mode – was a familiar territory within which she could prowl.

Darien chewed serenely. He found himself smiling internally despite himself. Perhaps he should stop. Adoring the way that she spoke in such a ridiculously predatory voice, like a kitten attempting a tiger's roar, really wasn't conducive to his determination not to interfere in Serena's apparently burgeoning relationship with Haruka Tennou.

"Don't you READ?" she demanded. Darien forced his mind away from Haruka Tennou.

"Sure," he said. "Actual _books_."

"Manga are actual books!" screeched Serena, pounding her fists on the table.

"TSUKINO!"

Serena and Darien both went pale. They both recognized the voice, as well as its owner, who was now charging through the crowded cafeteria tables with all the grace of an attacking rhinoceros.

Coach Etoukou threw himself into the chair next to Darien. "Thought I heard your dulcet tones, Tsukino!" He slapped his clipboard down on the table. "And Shields, too! Good to see you've dropped Itto, Tsukino. Rotten apple, that one. Easy on the eyes, but mushy center. Not like this one." He clapped Darien on the back. "May not be much to look at, but he's _tough_. Like beef jerky! Right, Shields?"

"Uh..." said Darien. "Right."

"Anyway!" Coach clapped his meaty hands on the tabletop. Serena's milk carton wobbled crazily, tipping –

Darien's hand shot out and righted it before it could spill directly into Serena's lap.

"Thanks!" said Serena in relief.

"A-_HA_!" Etoukou stabbed a finger at Darien's hand as though it was a cockroach he'd been hunting for hours and had finally cornered.

"Coach, it's not what it looks like – !" panicked Serena.

"I heard it tipping – " hurried Darien.

"Your reflexes are still as sharp as ever!" boomed Etoukou, ignoring both of them. "I knew you wouldn't let yourself go soft, Shields!"

Both teenagers wilted.

"I have a proposition for you," Coach informed Darien, wagging his finger at him. "But before that – " He swung his mustached head around to look at Serena. " – where's , your cousin from Zimbabwe, Tsukino?"

"Um – " Serena's eyes went wide and darted around. "You see, she, um…"

A strangled sound escaped Darien; her eyes flicked to him for help and saw his lips twisted in a strange shape that she recognized after a moment as him smothering laughter.

"She had to go back," said Serena lamely. "They wanted her to run on their Olympic team, you see."

"ARGHHH!" Coach dug his hands into his thinning fringe of hair beneath his baseball cap with an agonized bellow.

The students around them, accustomed to Etoukou's theatrics, snickered collectively and ignored him.

"She could have taken us to Nationals!" He sniffled, taking out a lacy handkerchief from his pocket to blow his nose into it with a trumpeting sound, then stuffed it back in his pocket. From his other pocket he extracted a bottle of hand sanitizer and spritzed it on his hands. He rubbed it in. Then he seized Serena's hands.

Serena yelped.

"Tsukino." If she had been able to see his eyes behind his sunglasses, Serena was pretty sure they would be aflame with passion. "You have to join the track team."

Serena laughed nervously. "Coach, really, I'm honored, but I have a lot of extra responsibilities at home right now, and I can't – "

"No, you don't understand. You HAVE to join the track team." Coach reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded square of paper. He unfolded it and slapped it down in front of her, grinning so widely that even his mustache seemed to be smiling.

Unease prickling her spine like a cactus, Serena leaned over the sheet of notebook paper. That unease expanded into full-blown panic as she read the entirety of the contract written on the paper.

"But I – I don't remember signing this!" she stammered, looking up. Except… A sinking feeling filled her.

"I do." Coach was nodding vigorously. "Remember that day you were so eager to skive out of detention?"

Yes, Serena remembered. The day that the arcade was attacked for the first time, the day that Lita transformed into Sailor Jupiter for the first time. The day she begged Coach, offered him anything, to let her leave detention early because she felt Darien through their link.

His laughter finally reabsorbed, Darien intervened. "Hang on, Coach Etoukou – "

"Don't worry, Shields!" Coach clapped him on the back once again. "You get to go with her!"

"Wait – what?"

"Tsukino signed over your participation in the contract, too!" Whistling merrily, Coach folded the paper back up and slid it into his jacket.

"Hang on!" said Darien. "She didn't even know what she was signing – "

"Shields, Shields, Shields." Coach unfolded himself from the chair, picking up his clipboard. "I convince the principal to let you keep coming to school here after you went blind so that you could stay with Tsukino, and neither of you two will run a few easy miles for me?"

His lower lip stuck out, and he began to sniffle. The lacy handkerchief remerged from his pocket –

"Okay!" Serena threw out her hands like a referee declaring 'Safe!' "We'll do it!"

"Says who?" demanded Darien.

Serena threw him a blazing 'Shut UP' look. "Okay, Coach? No crying, okay? Okay?"

"OOOOHHH!" Coach stuffed the kerchief back into his pocket…and they should have expected what happened next.

He swept them both into a hug, squeezing them together despite their positions on opposite sides of the table. Serena let out a gasp. Darien grunted in pain, then groaned as he realized that his cheek was mashed against Serena's.

"I LOVE YOU GUYS!" trilled Coach, giving them one last squeeze before letting go.

They collapsed back into their chairs with a loud racket. Serena's milk wobbled and toppled over again, this time onto Darien's fish sandwich. They eyed each other with resignation and matching flushed faces.

"Ta ta!" Coach flapped a hand in a goodbye wave and exited the cafeteria the same chaotic way he'd came.

Silence was left behind at the table. Darien sighed and began mopping up the milk with a napkin.

"Sorry," said Serena shamefacedly, grabbing her own napkin and helping. "It was that time the arcade got attacked – I felt you being attacked and I didn't look at what I was signing."

"You're a minor. Technically, he can't hold you to any contract you signed." Darien dropped the sopping ball of napkin on his tray. "You don't have to do it."

"Well, but I gave him my word."

Darien snorted. "If you're going to be ethical about it, how about the lack of morals involved in using our superpowers in competitions?"

Serena winced. But the subject of Coach's competitions took the backseat to something else. "Principal Waishatsu wasn't going to let you come back?"

"He didn't think it was a wise idea," worded Darien deliberately. "I thought I had convinced him otherwise, but apparently Coach Etoukou may have had a hand in it as well." He scowled. "Or maybe he's just preying on my sense of obligation."

"So you ARE going do it?" asked Serena, wide-eyed.

"Are YOU?"

Serena fidgeted, again almost able to feel the weight of his four senses – _oops, three, I'm pretty sure he's not tasting me. Sigh_ – focusing on her. "Yes. But that doesn't have anything to do – "

"Ugh! Finally!" Asanuma threw himself into the chair next to Serena. Serena's mouth snapped shut. "Takato would not stop talking at me! Hey." He looked around. "Where're the lovebirds?"

L

Motoki snagged Lita as she was walking out of her physics class, his fingers lightly grasping her shoulder and steering her out of the stream of students exiting the classroom.

She grinned up at him, pleasantly surprised. "Hey."

He smiled back at her. "Hi." He leaned a shoulder against the wall of lockers behind her. "How was class?"

"Boring. Is it ever anything else?" Lita eyed him, now just a little suspicious. "So why the escort to lunch?"

"Well, I was thinking…we could maybe do our own thing for lunch today?" Motoki hooked one corner of his lips at her, pushing his hair out of his eyes. "I made zucchini bread."

Lita winced. "That would be great…except…" She saw Motoki opening his mouth to argue, so she hurried to finish before he could speak. "I'm not leaving her alone with him."

Motoki sighed. "Asanuma'll be there. Eventually," he added in a mutter.

"Eventually?" Lita crossed her arms and lifted her eyebrows at him.

"He just has to drop an assignment off first. And Lita, I really think what they need is a little time together. In some place normal, like school, you know? Not Elysion."

"Time together to do what?" Lita pushed away from the lockers and began walking down the hall. Motoki kept up with her easily, matching her long strides with his own gangly legs. "Decide they're in love again so Serena can get her heart broken – again?"

"They need each other, Lita."

"No, Motoki. _Shields_ needs Serena. _She_ doesn't need _him_."

"Look." Motoki grabbed her, not by her arm but by her hands. Gently, so gently, he swung her around to face him. "I'll drop it. Okay? I don't want arguing about Serena and Darien to ruin you and me."

Lita studied him, working her jaw, click click click click. She owed him. Relationships weren't supposed to keep records, she knew, of give and take, but she _owed _Motoki. She had put him through hell these past few weeks, avoiding him and treating him like crap and then trying to kill him and now giving him a hard time about his best friend – and yet he still stayed with her. Still didn't give up on her. He had bags the size of doorknobs under his eyes, and stubble shadowed his jaw, but he was still thinking about her. Still working on the side despite his schoolwork and youma fighting and the arcade repairs to repair their relationship while she sat by cavalierly.

"Okay," she said. "Where are we eating?"

L

Asanuma had a make-up calculus test after school that day ("He's put it off for three weeks, the teacher's threatening to fail him if he puts it off another day," said Motoki), leaving the rather volatile combination of Lita, Darien, Motoki, and Serena to go pick up Rini after school.

Serena would have preferred to go alone, really, or perhaps with only Motoki as he was the only one who didn't seem to have the potential to emotionally damage Rini. But Darien had mumbled something about "my responsibility," an unmistakeable green tinge to his face, and stubbornly kept to her side – albeit at a safe distance. Lita, upon seeing Darien within a foot of Serena, insisted that she come along as well and quickly cut between the two of them with Motoki in tow.

Lita strode purposefully beside Serena, leaving Darien and Motoki to walk behind. Serena searched her mind for a neutral topic of conversation that wouldn't set a spark to either of the power kegs that were Lita and Darien.

"I hope Asanuma does well on his math test," she settled upon saying. "Had he studied for it, Motoki-nii-chan?"

"Even if he didn't, he'll do fine." Motoki smiled. "He's like someone else we know who seems to excel without trying at everything he does."

Serena grinned at the way Motoki lifted his brows at her and flicked his eyes at Darien. "You're talking about Buji, of course."

"Of course," said Motoki, and they exchanged grins, watching Darien listen to them with a furrowed brow.

"I hope you don't flatter Buji like that to his face," Darien said, frowning.

At their responding snickers, his frown deepened. "I'm serious. If you give him a superiority complex, it could severely impact his social interaction."

"Yeah, that's nice, anyway," said Lita, who hadn't been listening at all the whole time, but merely glaring at Darien. She linked Serena's elbow with hers. "Serena, you never finished telling me about your date Saturday night!"

Serena's laughter died; her heartrate spiked.

Her eyes flicked involuntarily to Darien as her thoughts sputtered in shock. Lita had just – she had just _said_ – in front of _Darien_ – !

"A date?" Motoki spoke very lightly. It was clear that he was trying hard to keep the conversation from collapsing, like a single pole left to hold up an entire circus tent. "Was it with Haruka Tennou, Usa-chan?"

"It was," Lita answered for Serena, nodding.

She looked at Serena, meeting her accusing eyes with awareness but without remorse. 'I had to do this,' her eyes seemed to be telling Serena.

Serena roused herself from her horrified shock to answer Motoki herself. "Yes. Yes, with Haruka-san. He was very nice."

"Yeah?" said Motoki, smiling at her kindly. "Where did you go?"

"It was a dinner party, sort of," said Serena. "The people who sponsored his F1 racing hosted it."

"I heard about that."

At Darien's voice, Serena flinched. But his words and his tone were only those of casual disinterest – which made her flinch again.

"It was on the news," he said. "The Meioh Corporation was celebrating their tenth year of sponsoring Formula One racing."

"Lucky!" said Motoki to Serena. "I bet there were tons of drivers there. Did you meet any?"

"If I did, I didn't recognize them. Sorry, Toki," said Serena with a wince that was partially from guilt and partially from disappointment. Why had she even thought that Darien would react to her date? He'd told her outright that he didn't love her. _Stupid._

"Would you look at that, we're here." Lita tugged Serena forward, picking up their pace as they headed down the sidewalk toward the entrance to the elementary school playground less than a block away. A familiar set of voices floated out the opened gate toward them, although only Darien's hearing was acute enough to clearly hear everything that they said.

"…are you reading that girly stuff for? Naruto's WAY better!"

"Then why don't you stop bothering me and read it?"

"Why don't you stop yelling at someone who's just trying to help you? If you read that icky girl stuff you'll get cooties."

"…"

"Cooties…"

"…"

"COOties – "

"BE QUIET!"

The quartet of high schoolers entered the gate just in time to see (or hear, in Darien's case) a yellow Inuyasha manga bounce off Buji's forehead.

Serena gasped and broke out of Lita's loose hold to dive for the mulch, snatching up the manga.

"Volume Twenty-Three!" she cried.

She hugged it to her chest and looked reproachfully at Rini. "I know I taught you to respect manga better than this, Rini."

Rini's mouth fell open; then she snapped it shut. "I was trying to READ! And he kept bothering me!" Rini stomped her foot and stabbed a finger at Buji, who still looked a bit swirly-eyed from the manga's impact with his head.

But the second Serena turned chastising eyes on him, the little boy turned on the puppy eyes.

"But 'nee-chan," he began, sniffling, "I was just trying to share how awesome Naruto is with her…"

Looking at his big brown eyes, Serena melted into a puddle of goo. She squeezed Buji into a hug, patting his back. Now it was Rini's turn to become the focus of reproaching blue eyes.

"Rini, how could you? Don't you see he was just trying to share his own manga interests with you? Naruto IS really good – "

"That's not what he was saying!" exclaimed Rini. It was hard to tell whether the look of horror on her face was from Serena's betrayal or the way that Buji was smirking at her from under Serena's oblivious chin. "He called Inuyasha _icky_!"

_BOOM_. Serena's eyes erupted into twin volcanoes.

"WHAT?" she roared.

Rini crossed her arms and stuck her tongue out at Buji, who was too panicked by the rabid blonde in front of him to make a face back at her.

"C'mon, onee-chan," he said nervously. "Even you have to admit that Naruto's better – "

"You do, Serena," agreed Motoki, who was a closet Naruto fan, crossing his arms and nodding sagely.

"MOTOKI!" shrieked Serena, shocked by this defection of the one person she could always count on to back her up. She sniffed and grabbed Rini's hand. "Come on, Rini. These unenlightened beings don't DESERVE our presence!"

She stomped out of the school yard, Rini in tow. Rini stuck her tongue out at Buji one last time before scampering victoriously away with Serena.

As their footsteps faded, Darien sensed Buji cross his arms. "Sheesh. GIRLS."  
"Question," said Darien. "What _is_ Inuyasha?"

L

Darien hadn't been brave enough to go after the two enraged girls, so he headed home after an informative – if disturbing – explanation by Buji about exactly what this Inuyasha character was ("He's just this lame dog-demon with a sword who isn't anywhere NEAR as cool as Naruto. Girls just like him because he has DOG EARS. Even my MOM likes him!" They shuddered together simultaneously).

As he was unlocking his apartment door, his cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He frowned, pushing the door shut behind him and hoping it wasn't a reminder to make another doctor's appointment. "Hello?"

"Duuuuude!"

"Asanuma." Darien stopped stock-still in the doorway to the kitchen, acutely aware that the spot was only a few feet away from where Asanuma had punched him into the wall a few days earlier.

"I gotta talk to you about something."

"...what?"

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING LETTING HARUKA TENNOU TAKE SERENA ON A DATE?"

Darien held the phone away from his ear as Asanuma shouted. When he was done, he returned it to his ear. "Is that why you called me?"

"What ELSE would I call you for, you DUMMY?"

"Serena's date choices aren't either of our business." Even he noticed how robotic and unconvincing his voice sounded, but he tried to concentrate instead on the three history essays that he had left until tonight to write.

"What the hell, man?" Asanuma demanded. "Did aliens abduct you?"

Darien didn't see why Asanuma was so angry. It wasn't as though _he _was the one giving up on Serena. "Asanuma, I'm busy."

"This is because of Rini, isn't it? All of a sudden there's proof that you get together with the moon princess, so you figure there's no point? Why can't you – "

"I'm. Busy."

Darien hung up before the conversation could drive him into becoming a drooling rabid lupine again.

_God._ His fingernails dug into his scalp.

He was _trying_ to do the _right thing_.

Why wouldn't anyone LET him?

L

"This is becoming a farce!" Rubeus roared, striding back and forth before the four sisters. His biceps bulged dangerously as he crossed his arms over his vest. "These Senshi are _children._ And yet we do not have enough energy to repair so much as one crystal!"

He spun on his booted heel to glare at Prisma, Avery, and Catzi. "I will not waste my time explaining to you how incredibly disgusted by your performance our prince has been. Nor will I remind you that your failures reflect on _me_." He gritted his teeth, looking at them with a pained expression. "The Wiseman has threatened to send Emerald."

A collective, outraged hiss was heard from the three sisters. "No!"

Avery leapt forward. "Rubeus, please! Let me try again! I'll take the princess and enough energy to take us home, I swear it!"

"Silence, Avery!" With merely his burning glare, Rubeus forced her back to her knees on the cold floor. He transferred his hard ruby eyes to Prisma, then Catzi. "Bertie will go. She has waited patiently while the rest of you leapt without looking. If she fails, then you will have one last chance."

Last, his eyes went to the white-haired woman standing demurely a few feet away from the other sisters.

"But you won't fail me," he said. "Will you, Bertie?"

"Rubeus." The white-haired woman smiled. "Have I ever?"

L

As soon as they got home, Serena approached her mother about putting Rini in a higher grade. Ikuko went to the school the next day to speak to the guidance counselor. The counselor, after giving Rini some tests, declared her extraordinarily advanced and placed her in…second grade.

"I could have done better," said Rini defiantly as she and Serena walked home the next day. "If…"

If she hadn't just had the traumatic experience of finding out that her dad kind of wished she'd never been born, Serena knew.

"…if I'd wanted to," Rini finished in a mumble.

Serena tugged one of Rini's pigtails. She understood now why people did that so much to her; those streamers of hair just hung there begging to be pulled.

"What are you talking about?" she said to the six year-old. This tendency, too, was like Darien; he never seemed to realize how very gifted he was.

"You're only six, and you already know multiplication and long division! That's amazing. You're just like your fa – " She froze and scrambled to keep her foot out of her mouth. " – vorite Senshi! Sailor Mercury!"

"Huh." Rini crossed her arms, looking ahead. "Mercury's not my favorite Senshi."

Serena paused in swiping the nervous sweat from her brow to look at Rini with wide, excited eyes. "Do you know Sailor Mercury in your time?"

Rini shook her head quickly. "I don't know any Senshi in the future. I've just heard of them." She hesitated. "And I've met Sailor Mars a couple times."

"Rei's _safe_…" A colossal weight, the presence of which Serena had nearly forgotten because she had become so accustomed to it, suddenly dissolved from her chest. Rei wasn't dead, lost in some ditch somewhere. But Ami – she whirled to Rini.

Who was looking at her with a crumpled, anxious expression.

"Don't ask me anymore," she ordered. She gripped the straps of her backpack tightly. "I can't tell you anymore about the future. I'm – I'm not supposed to."

Quickly Serena backed off. "Okay. I won't ask anything else."

Rini took a deep breath, hunching her shoulders and striding quickly forward along the sidewalk with a spurt of speed. Serena hurried to catch up.

"Hey!" she said. "I know! I'll buy us some ice cream to celebrate your promotion!"

"It's arctic out here," said Rini, but she followed Serena to the ice cream vendor in the park. They sat in the grass behind a stand of oak trees that blocked the worst of the winter wind and shivered, Rini delicately licking her mint ice cream in a bowl as Serena attacked her triple chocolate cone.

"Hey, it's almost Christmas," Serena realized, taking a pause in her tongue-lashing of the ice cream.

Rini looked at her and wordlessly shoved a napkin out of her.

"Heheheh," said Serena sheepishly, using it to scrub her face. "Oops."

Rini sighed and turned away, but it was mostly to hide the grin that she buried in her jacket sleeve.

"Any ideas what you want for Christmas?"

Rini's grin faded; she shook her head. "Nothing. I'm already taking advantage of your family."

"Are you kidding? My mom loves having you around. And so does Sammy, for that matter." Serena glowered as she thought of the various insults the two grade-schoolers had allied to throw her way. "The little creep… Anyway, think about it! You're definitely getting a present." She grinned. "So you better give me one, too!"

The cutting wind was far too cold against their exposed skin for them to linger long in the grass. The two shivering girls threw their napkins into the trash cans on the path out of the park.

"Wow," said Serena as they walked out of the wall of hedges that framed the park entrance. "I think that's the first time I've been to the park without a youma attacking."

Behind them, a scream rang out.

Rini rolled her eyes. "Way to jinx it, genius."

"Geeze…" Serena's shoulders slumped as more screams scratched the air. "C'mon." She dragged Rini behind the maintenance shed near the trash cans. She pressed a hand against her brooch, triggering her transformation, then studied Rini. "I'm having a thought here."

"Did you know that you're naked when you transform?" cried Rini, throwing her hands in front of her eyes. "You couldn't have WARNED me?"

"Um…oops?" said Sailor Moon again. "Sorry, no one's mentioned it before…" She flushed, thinking of all the times she'd transformed in front of Darien. Of course, he was blind – and! She hastily stopped herself, forcing Haruka's face to the front of her mind instead. "Anyway, I'm gonna put you in my subspace pocket, okay?"

"What?" cried Rini in alarm. "No way! You don't even know if there's air in there!"

"Of course there is!" exclaimed Moon, although she wasn't sure herself. "Anway, I'm not leaving you to be found again! Can't you transform into something that doesn't need air? Like a rock, or something?"

"I'm still HUMAN when I transform, idiot! I need AIR!"

"Rini, trust me on this! You're not gonna suffocate!"

"If I die, I'm coming back and haunting you." Rini stabbed her finger at Moon. "You'll have peanut butter and chewing gum in your hair _every morning_."

As she spoke, she squeezed her eyes shut tight.

Moon eyed her uncertainly

Rini popped an eyelid open. "Put me in! Get it over with already!"

"Um – " Moon winced. "Could you transform into a flower or something small first? You should fit fine once you're in the pocket, but it'll be kind of hard to get you in there the size you are now…"

Rini glared. In the distance, she heard more shouting, so she sat on the ground abruptly, wrapped her arms around her knees in a tight ball, and concentrated the way that the voice in her dreams had taught her. She felt her body shrinking…

L

Sailor Moon carefully picked up the white gardenia lying on the grass.

"Here we go, Rini," she said, sliding her carefully into her subspace pocket. Hopefully there wasn't anything in there that could hurt her…it wasn't as though there had been time to clean it out and install an oxygen tank in there. As she broke into a sprint, she mentally catalogued the pocket's contents. It should be fairly clean right now, actually: just her Luna Pen and a first-aid kit – oh, and that manga series that she hadn't wanted her parents ever to find her room… she giggled nervously, hoping that Rini wouldn't see them. Did flowers have eyes?

She followed the shouts to the edge of the lake that sat in the center of the park, next to the docks where couples could rent boats to go for a romantic row.

There were three youma: a) a white-faced youma that she took out with a focused Twilight Flash beam from her tiara before she even emerged from the cover of the trees; b) one of the usual buxom, humanoid mutant youma; and c) a woman whose fashion sense immediately announced her as none other than the last of the Four Sisters. She wore what looked like a low-cut blue bathing suit made of nothing but frosted glass, a pair of gloves, a pair of boots, and nothing more. Moon winced, wondering how the woman wasn't covered in goose bumps from the cold temperature.

The water against the dock churned crazily, slopping up onto the shore. The ground from the shore to where Moon stood ten meters away was a swamp of mud. The water came up past her considerably long heels to lick against her ankles through her boots.

Moon ignored this discomfort, her attention fastened instead upon the dozen-odd unconscious people who lay, many face-down, in the water. They would suffocate, but if she moved from her cover in the trees to pull them out, the youma would attack her before she got to more than one of them. She bit her lip –

A violent wind swept through the trees, descending upon the mudded area with a snarl. Moon clung to the tree branch, feeling the violence of the wind tear the earrings from her earlobes. But almost as quickly as it had begun, the gale ended, and Moon opened her eyes to find the several inches of water blown from the ground, leaving the youma victims covered in mud but able to breathe. Moon brushed her hand over the rope connecting her to Darien, remembering the almost hypnotic control of his golden eyes and the way he had seemed able to read minds, checking to see how he had known to send a wind to help her without her asking him, but he was occupied, she discovered, fighting a youma near the fish market downtown.

But then… who? She looked around – and was slapped in the face by a slosh of icy water.

She leapt out of it, gasping and spitting, wet bangs pasted over her eyes.

"What's the matter, Moon-girl?" called a lightly-accented voice.

Swiping her hair from her eyes, Moon saw that it was the Sister speaking. A ribbon of sparkling water undulated around her extended hands.

"Do you plan to stand there gaping, or will you fight?"

"Right backatcha." Moon widened her stance and eyed both the youma and the sister warily. She did not yet know the youma's mode of attack (although the sharp icicles that capped its arms and legs gave her a good idea), and if they both attacked her at the same time…

She pulled off her tiara and stretched it into a shield, wishing that there was a way to make both a shield and a sword from her tiara at the same time. Wouldn't Miss Lanai be impressed if she returned and found Serena able to do that! Ignoring the fact that Miss Lanai had told her not to transform while she was gone, of course…

The youma lunged forward. Its attack was as Moon had suspected – it stabbed the sharp icicles at the end of its limbs at her in a rapid cartwheel of motion. Moon alternated between blocking them with her shields and dodging, but a new challenge was presented to her: the youma chased her straight into the midst of the unconscious bodies littered on the ground.

Moon leapt and spun among them, trying to prevent both herself and the unconscious victims from being speared by the youma. And straining her senses to be aware for the sister's inevitable participation in the fight as well…

Then a body directly in front of her bolted upright. Moon toppled into it and fell in a tangle of limbs – she rolled her own body over the smaller one beneath her to shield it.

Immediately she felt a cold, sharp icicle push through the muscle on the back of her thigh. A curtain of hot blood gushed down her leg.

Then a familiar voice cried out, "Sailor Moon!" right in her ear.

She rolled to the ground, thinking blearily, _Rini?_

But then a curly dark head rose in her vision. Below it a pair of arms spread out. "Stay away from Sailor Moon!"

_Buji!_ Moon lunged to her feet, ignoring the wound in her leg. "Get down!"

She grabbed him and heaved her shield up just in time to block the icicle-arm rushing toward them. She panted, struggling both to hold the shield against the force of the youma's push and to understand how Buji was awake – "Run!"

"I'm not gonna run!" he shouted back at her as the youma rammed her shield again. Moon grunted, heaving her shoulder muscles against the force, and felt a fresh gush of warm blood down her leg. "My mom's here!"

_Mayuko-san?_ Moon peered from the corner of her sweat-blurred eyes and saw the round swell of Mayuko-san's belly in the grass only a few feet away…and she, too, was stirring!

"On the count of three," she breathed harshly at Buji, "get her out of here!"

She gritted her teeth, closed her eyes, concentrating –

"One" – willing her energy to gather at the surface of the tiara like with her Twilight Flash –

"Two" – she had done it with the sword against Prisma, she could do it here, she just needed to –

"THREE!"

Silver energy rocketed from the surface of her shield to stab up into the sky like the Bat-signal.

The icicle-armed youma bearing down on her shield disintegrated like a shadow in light.

Moon wavered to her feet, panting and dripping sweat. From the side of her eyes, she saw Buji crouching over Mayuko-san, but she forced her bleared eyes to focus on the pale white blur that was the Fourth Sister.

But even as she watched, the woman disappeared in a swirl of black energy.

Moon tensed, backing toward Buji and Mayuko-san. She held her shield still up on her trembling arm as she glanced around. Two full minutes passed without her sensing the youma. Slowly, she lowered the shield.

"Sailor Moon!" She turned to see Buji and his mother gaping at her. "You're hurt!"

Moon looked behind her, down at her leg, ignoring the lack of dignity in her twisted position.

"What, this?" she said with a bright smile. "It's nothing. Look."

She tore the butt-bow from her fuku and swiped it across the mess of gore. "It's already healing."

But she grimaced internally. It was healing all right, but not as quickly as it should have been. The palm-sized hole still wept beads of blood. After two minutes of stillness, it should already have sewn itself up completely. That shield-flashburst had really drained her…

She needed more conditioning.

Moon shook away her self-concerned thoughts. "Are you both alright?"

As she asked, she looked around, seeing that the other youma victims were stirring faintly. But none of them were anywhere near being as awake and alert as Buji and Mayuko-san…

Moon turned her gaze back to them. Then she blinked and squinted. Had she just seen…?

She shook herself again. "Ma'am, you should go to the hospital and make sure the baby's okay. Do you need help?"

Mayuko-san stared at her with narrowed eyes. Moon took a step backward despite herself. She was used to seeing looks of distrust – but not from Mayuko-san!

Then she remembered something she had heard Mayuko-san say the first time she met her. _"Where were the Sailor Senshi when you needed them, honey? Or when Daddy needed them?"_ Buji's father, Mayuko-san's husband, had died in one of the youma attacks that Moon had not stopped.

Sailor Moon knelt, ignoring the twinge from her thigh, and bowed her head, pressing her palms flat to the ground.

"Iwara-san," she said quietly. "I know that forgiveness is too much to ask, but please accept my deepest apologies for not saving your husband."

A strangled sound emerged from Mayuko-san's mouth.

Moon squeezed her eyes shut tight, her fingers clenching in the grass of the ground. She felt so unworthy. All this time acting innocent and playing with Buji as if he were her own family and not as if she was the one who had failed to stop his father's death… if Mayuko-san only knew…

"I never realized before," Mayuko-san spoke, her voice swollen and cracking like pottery left too long in a kiln, "how young you are."

Moon lifted her head, looking up at Mayuko's tear-filled eyes with confusion.

"I am the one who should be asking for your forgiveness," said Mayuko-san. She hugged Buji to her tightly as she gazed at Moon.

"I've blamed you all this time for Daisuke's – for my husband's death. But you've saved Buji's life so many times, and you – you can't even be much older than Serena..." She was whispering, as though to herself, but Moon heard her and stiffened.

"I…I'm so sorry," Mayuko-san said, louder. "And so thankful."

She squeezed Buji tighter, tears running down her face, and knelt to mirror Moon's supplicating position.

"Oh – no!" Sailor Moon jumped to her feet, pulling Mayuko-san up also. In the distance she heard approaching sirens. "You can't kneel in your condition, Ma – Iwara-san! Wait for the ambulance so you can go to the hospital and make sure the baby's okay!"

Mayuko-san smiled genuinely up at her. "Thank you, Sailor Moon."

Sailor Moon smiled back and looked down at her side, where Buji stood with his arms around his mother's legs as though to brace her. He grinned at her as brightly as a star, eyes crinkling at the edge.

She smiled back and couldn't resist saying, "You were super-brave, Buji."

Buji's grin grew, if anything, kilowatts brighter. "Guess you'll have to make me an honorary Senshi, Sailor Moon!"

Sailor Moon laughed, and a chuckle joined her.

Turning, she saw a dark shadow dropping from a tree branch. So he had taken care of his youma.

"Tuxedo Mask!" breathed Buji.

Mask, approaching, tipped his hat at the boy. Then he turned toward Moon, lips parting to say something, when a police car burst suddenly through the trees.

In silent unison Moon and Mask shot into the trees.

"Bye!" Moon called to Buji as they fleet-footed away.

Mask followed her to the clearing that they had found with Buji during the summer.

"Report," he said, only half-jokingly.

"Hang on." Moon reached into her subspace pocket and pulled out the white gardenia. The petals looked rumpled but otherwise no worse for the wear. She set it carefully on the grass, ignoring Mask's lifted eyebrows.

"Okay, you can change back now," she told it.

The gardenia twitched on the ground. Then it grew and unfolded into Rini, her hair mussed and her face flushed.

She glared at Serena. "You couldn't have put a warning on those manga?"

"You read them?" gasped Moon, horrified.

"There wasn't anything else to do!" exclaimed Rini. "Argh! Between those manga and you transforming right in front of me, I'm mentally scarred for life!"

Sailor Moon crossed her arms, just as embarrassed as Rini. Defensively, she said, "I refuse to believe that someone who was raised by Asanuma hasn't heard much worse."

"Heard, maybe!" retorted Rini. "But _seeing_ it's a totally different traumatic experience."

Mask, who had reacted fairly well first to hearing Moon talk to an inanimate object and then to realizing that said inanimate object was Rini, placed in Serena's subspace pocket, was looking a little uncomfortable with this topic.

"Are these the Inuyasha manga you were talking about?" he dared to ask.

"NO!" blurted out Moon, as red as Mars' high heels. Bad enough that Rini knew about about the manga, but DARIEN? "It's not what you think – I'm just holding onto them for Molly!"

"For Molly?" echoed Mask. His brows were in the same position they always were when he was training every one of his senses on her.

"Yes!" Moon jerked her head in one vehement nod.

In a perfect, monotoned unison, Mask and Rini said, "You can't lie."

Then they glared at each other. Rini went "Hmph!" and reached up to wind her little arms around Moon's neck.

"Let's go home, Serena," she said, chin jutting. "It's cold."

Moon was too relieved to have escaped that embarrassing conversation to do anything but do exactly as Rini said.

L

"Hah! Looks like Rubeus's faith in you was misplaced after all, Bertie." Avery tossed her head as she turned from her mirror to watch the white-haired woman step out of a portal.

Bertie fiddled with the inside of her wrist, her serene expression unaffected. "Believe what you will, Avery."

"Imbecile, Avery." Prisma spoke up from her position in the corner. "Bertie wasn't trying to kill the brat, were you, Bertie?"

Bertie succeeded in extracting two small crystals from her wrist and looked up with a smile touching the corners of her pale lips. "No."

"Then what WERE you doing?" Catzi huffed, leaning forward to peer over Bertie's shoulder. She reached for the glowing blue-white crystals that hovered just centimeters above Bertie's gloved palm.

Bertie closed her fingers, neatly protecting the crystals from Catzi's seeking grasp. "Ask Prisma. I need to give one of these to Rubeus before I study it myself."

She stepped into another portal. Catzi and Avery looked over at Prisma. The dark-haired Sister smirked, splaying her hand in front of her to examine her nails and enjoying her superiority over her younger sisters.

"Ugh, cut the smug and tell us," Catzi groaned.

"It's clear, Catzi, that she doesn't actually know," Avery cut in, eyeing her older sister insolently from beneath her eyelashes. "She just wants us to think she's more clever than she is."

"I do know, Avery!" Prisma shot to her feet, snapping. She stumbled and caught her seat to keep herself upright.

"Tsk, tsk, Prisma," said Avery. "You know you're not well enough to stand on your own yet after what that little girl did to you."

"Not a little girl," ground out Prisma. "A Senshi. A High Senshi, with all the power she had."

Both Avery and Catzi rolled their eyes; they had heard this rant before.

"Yes, because a High Senshi would really be sitting back and letting us prey on the planet like this," said Avery. "Just tell us what Bertie was really doing. Unless I was right and you really DON'T know."

Prisma mustered a sneer of her own, lifting her nose in the air. "Well, wasn't it obvious? She recorded Sailor Moon's fight with the youma to analyze her attacks and fighting style. With that information, Bertie'll be able to counter any of the brat's attacks and chew her up easy."

"So you explained to them, did you, Prisma?" Bertie stepped back out of the portal and smiled at them. "Sorry, girls. Rubeus always did like to save the best for last."

L

"Forgive the hackneyed pun, my pretty Rei, but your fighting lacks fire." Mercury lowered her gloved hands. "You will uncover no more attacks if you lack the motivation to do so."

Rei, in her fuku, also lowered her hands. But she regarded Mercury expressionlessly.

Mercury summoned a pointed icicle and prodded Rei with it. "Come now, unleash your inner demons on Mother Mercury."

Rei moved backward out of the icicle's reach but made no move to bat it away.

Mercury's eyes hardened as her smile widened. The icicle's length suddenly doubled, lunging forward to press its sharp tip against Rei's white throat.

"Come now, Rei. It'll be just like confession."

Rei's violet eyes fell to the icicle resting against her throat. But she said nothing.

"Oh, it slipped my mind," said Mercury flippantly. "You're a heathen, aren't you? A blaspheming, Jesus-hating infidel who will burn in hell along with your pagan grandfather – "

Fire erupted at Rei's throat. It roared down the length of the icicle with the speed of a jaguar. Mercury dropped the vaporizing icicle just before the flame could leap to her fingers.

Then she spun, shooting a wall of smaller, sharper icicles at Rei. They hissed out of existence in a wall of fire that swirled up in front of her.

"Of course – " Mercury shot another flurry of icles at her, then blurred and shot them at her from the opposite direction. " – what does it matter if you go to hell? There wasn't anyone in heaven waiting for you. Your grandfather wanted you to be your mother, and your mother hated you for being the child of the man she had learned to hate – "

Mercury cut short as a volley of fiery arrows pinned her to the wall. Rei stood directly in front of her, a bow of flame crackling in her hands and an arrow notched in it – aimed at Mercury's throat.

"There are two people in this world who love Rei Hino. And they are both alive." Mercury smiled past the flaming arrow, at Rei. "Shall we find you the power to keep them that way?"

L

Asanuma yanked the sweaty bandanna from his head. His shoulders and vertebrae popped as he straightened.

He stepped back to inspect the canvas. Two weeks' worth of meticulous sketching had resulted in this, her face. Shadowed and distant, her lips pressed together as though biting down on them to suppress a smile – this image was the first and most cherished memory he had of her, that night at the diplomatic function to which her father had brought her.

A vivid memory that made his clumsy sketch look as though a kindergartner had drawn it.

He groaned and dug his pencil into the corner of the canvas, pushing it until the tip broke.

What had he been thinking? What was he STILL thinking right now? He couldn't believe that he had been idiotic enough, conceited enough, to think that he would ever be able to capture her likeness on paper – it was enough to make the back of his neck flush. And that he'd been obsessed enough, _creepy_ enough, to paint a portrait of her, much less to spend so much time on it, like a stalker…

But did these thoughts slow him down at all? No! He was still gazing at the potrait wondering if he dared to risk ruining the sketch by painting it!

He had to paint it, of course, or how else would he be able to remember the faint flush from cold that had suffused her translucent cheeks like the blush just beneath a red apple's skin? Or the spot where her lips had turned the faintest shade of white when she bit down on her lip to keep from smiling at the jokes that he had made in an attempt to break her Spartan mask?

It wasn't good enough.

He pushed away from the canvas to sit on his paper-strewn bed. It wasn't good enough, whether in color or black and white or well-drawn or not. He could paint a portrait of her more perfect than the Mona Lisa, and still it would not have her voice or her razor tongue or that heartbreaking veneer of condescencion and resentment that coated her like a chrysalis too strong for her to escape from on her own.

And he'd been so close. That night at the prom, right there, she had been close enough for him to touch. If he hadn't waited or worried about what to say, if he'd just _said_ it –

Asanuma stood up and wrenched the canvas from its easel. Then he kicked open his closet and stuffed the canvas, inside, against the wall, and buried it from his sight behind a pile of shirts and jackets.

He didn't want a charcoal-smudged, paint-smeared, imperfect two-dimensional representation of Rei.

He wanted _her_.

L

Rei was coming along swimmingly. She was making exponentially more progress than she had under those clumsy, heavy-handed Outer Senshi. But even Satan-spawn needed sleep, and Mercury had left the girl for some well-deserved rest.

Meanwhile, she herself – who was perhaps a little bit more wicked than Satan-spawn – was threading the next needle for her web.

In the weeks that she had spent observing Kentaro Mikai, she had discovered that he had an honorable streak as wide as the Centauri asteroid belt. She had seen him clock out but continue to work helping a younger mechanic and watched him cover the bill for a struggling father who couldn't afford to repair his windshield.

He would not, she felt quite certain, hesitate to rescue a damsel in distress. He was like Minako in that compulsory honor code, and Mercury positively cackled to think of the sorts of scrapes into which she would be able to trick the two goody two-shoes once this Shittenou and Minako's reincarnation met and paired off.

Her wait for a suitable youma to appear did not last long. The computer program that she had created to detect the dimensional rifts created by the arrival of a Black Moon creature alarmed her to the existence of a lower-level youma, one of the white-faced legion.

She teleported to the rift's spot, a busy intersection on the outskirts of Juuban, far from the other Senshi's usual haunts, just as the mini black hole behind the buxom youma swirled out of existence. Mercury caught the last readings from the rift on her computer and swiftly backed up the file for later analysis.

Then she slid her computer into her Subspace pocket and transferred her attention to the youma.

She did not transform, for that would have advertised her presence as obviously as a signal flare. Instead she aimed a tendril of concentrated aura at the youma's white skull. Its faceless head immediately swung toward her. She smiled and took off lithely down the street.

The youma bounded after her with an agility that would have been surprising had she not already studied dozens of its fellows in detail. The white legion youma moved with a curious, awkward yet swift movement as though their joints were rotational and not hinged. As soon as this stage of her plan was carried out, Mercury would obtain one of these youma to dissect it and determine whether her hypothesis concerning their joints was correct…the question, of course, would be where and how to dissect the youma without Pluto discovering. And of course, how to immobilize it without dusting it and without encasing it in a solid block of ice, for she doubted that traditional tranquilizer injections would work…

These thoughts pleasantly occupied her mind on the fairly long sprint to the garage where the third of Endymion's Shittenou spent his days.

Once there, Mercury neatly cut the string of aura that led the youma to her. She transformed then into Ami Mizuno's civilian persona: shoulder length dark hair, a killer set of ankles, and both a frame and face that quite accurately displayed the golden proportion that so appealed to the Terrans.

Then she began screaming.

The Shittenou emerged first from the garage, and this pleased her, for it meant that his superior and auditory senses had already begun to manifest.

His reaction time, however, was not what she had expected: instead of lunging between her and the youma, he stood in the garageway, watching.

This pause gave the youma time to dart for her. Unwilling to reveal any of her skills, Mercury screamed and ran. Then she stumbled deliberately, sprawling on the sidewalk.

But then the Terran disappeared altogether!

Watching through the reflective surface of her sunglasses, Mercury saw him retreat back into the garage. Her reckoning of Terra fell yet a notch lower. First the prince who put his personal romance before his planet, then a Shittenou who disliked fighting – Jupiter's counterpart, no less! – and now this cowardice?

She rolled over on her back, snapping her legs in to her chest as the youma bounded over to lunge at her. Her legs snapped out straight, planting a solid kick in its chest and bringing herself to her feet in the same motion.

The movement had been carefully calculated; the youma stumbled backward only far enough to give Mercury room to stand and not to reveal any of her Senshi strength to any bystanders. Mercury cowered back into her scared-Terran-female pose, backing away from the youma as her mind calmly progressed through a series of decisions. This would be the youma she would use as a specimen to observe, she decided, since the Shittenou's spinelessness had nullified her original plans for it.

Preparing to lure the youma away again, Mercury suddenly detected a sound behind her. Her eyes returned to the reflection in her sunglasses; there was an orange glow there to which she had become quite accustomed in her past few days with Rei Hino. Yet she had not sensed the arrival of the fire Shittenou…

The sound grew, the youma lunged for her again, and Mercury threw herself backward.

Now, on her back, she could see what she had not been able to before – the third Shittenou had returned outside with a blowtorch in his hands. He hulked in front of her with a grunt, and Mercury had to lean on her elbows to see around his body as the flame from the blowtorch licked the youma's arm and then climbed voraciously up the rest of its black frame, until the whole creature was a poor parody of Jadeite in his fire-shield technique. Its black mouth opened mutely as it melted into black sludge a meter from her feet.

She looked at it, reminded herself to palm a sample before she left, then looked up at the Terran who had failed her entire plan through sheer idiocy or ingenuity – when she was less annoyed she would decide which one it was.

Turning around, the Shittenou swiped a hand across his pierced eyebrow. "You okay?"

Forcing herself back into frightened-Terran mode, Mercury nodded shakily. He reached a hand down to help her up. Swallowing her distaste, she allowed herself to put a trembling hand in his and be pulled up.

"Are you okay?" he repeated again.

"Y-yes," she stammered out, trying to pull her hand away in an imitation of what any adolescent female with a sense of preservation would do in the presence of a pierced and dyed male like Kentaro Mikai. "P-please let me go!"

He released her. She pivoted and fled, taking care to scuff her shoe through the youma's remains as she did so.

It was just like Minako's partner to do such a thing, to be so contrary, she fumed later as she paced in the bedroom across from that of Mars's reincarnation. Always requiring her to do more, do more, do more…

But that was fine. She grinned evilly into the time-window that now hovered safely in the dimensional pocket that she had created for it. There was nothing that Mercury enjoyed as much as a challenge.

L

A/N: Sorry for the delay and the lack of editing in this chapter. Also for the lack of Sere/Dare. Please tell me what you thought of Coach and of Rei, Numa, and Merc, though. Please?


	22. Chapter 22

A/N: Language warning again. Sorry for the incredible delay; it's been a busy life. Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed "A Man He Will Never Forgive;" I adore you all. Especially Elen-di and Spriteofice. And, of course, jade-eye!

I don't know if FF's going to allow me to do this, but there's been something I've been wanting to do for a really long time. I'm going to take a leaf out of Stephenie Meyer's book and put up a playlist of the songs I think especially fit with STC and which I listened to to write it. It's going to be a bit spoilerish as far as a certain relationship. Skip it if you want; it's just the indulgences of a writer.

**Season One:** (for Chapters 31-33 especially, mostly Sere/Dare)

Blue October: Everlasting Friend, 18th Floor Balcony

Evanescence: The Only One

Hush Sound: Magnolia

Imogen Heap: Clear the Area

Killers: When You Were Young (Rei and Numa)

Linkin Park: Valentine's Day, In Pieces

Maroon 5: Won't Go Home Without You, Goodnight Goodnight

Michelle Branch: Breathe, 'Til I Get Over You

Muse: Starlight

Snow Patrol: Run

Uverworld: D:Technolife

Vanessa Carlton: White Houses

**Season Two:**

Amy Grant: You're Not Alone

Blue October: Congratulations (S/D and Rini/Buji), Drilled a Wire Through My Cheek

Evanescence: Weight of the World, Your Star

Hush Sound: Hurricane

Imogen Heap: The Moment I Said It

Jonas Brothers: A Little Bit Longer, Sorry (Asanuma/Rini [not THAT way] and Buji/Rini)

Maroon 5: Not Falling Apart, The Sun (R/B)

Ministry of Magic: However Far Away

My Chemical Romance: Famous Last Words

Nightwish: End of All Hope

Sara Bareilles: Gravity

Secondhand Serenade: Fall For You (Rei/Numa)

Three Days Grace: Animal I Have Become

The Veronicas: When It All Falls Apart

Vienna Teng: Gravity, The Tower, My Medea, Lullabye for a Stormy Night

We The Kings: Check Yes Juliet

There's a lot more, but that's already a lot. These are the most important ones.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon or any of the above songs.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Twenty-Two: Play Along

L

Mikai peeled off his coveralls and threw them into the basket that sat just inside the door that led from his garage to the kitchen. The heat clicked on as he closed the door behind him and turned on the kitchen faucet to wash the leftover oil from his hands.

Night had fallen outside; in the kitchen window he could see his reflection as clearly as if the glass pane was a mirror. His eyes stared back at him thoughtfully.

The girl whom the youma had attacked that day had snagged on a hook in his memory and tugged at it. He would bet his mecha anime collection that he had seen her before.

His mind whirred as his hands continued to rub together, although all the soap and oil had long since been rubbed away. Despite his flirtatious bravado in front of his peers, he didn't come into contact with a lot of females. One did not come into contact with many individuals, male or female, when on spent the majority of one's time on the computer or in one's basement tinkering with various waste-based engines; it was a statistical fact.

The last female with whom he'd held an actual conversation, in fact, was that Serena Tsukino.

Recognition _ding!_ed in his brain.

He spun away from the sink to fling himself into his desk chair. Punching the button to turn on the laptop that sat there, he pushed his fingers impatiently through his gelled hair as he waited for it to load.

A minute later he was scanning the online folder that he had saved of newspaper articles and blog postings concerning the youma attack on Darien's high school last spring.

Here was the main article, published a week after the attack. Mikai had re-read it to figure out exactly what had happened to Darien's eyes after he had seen him again with his curly-haired friend.

Certain that it was something related to this article and Serena Tsukino that had reminded him of the girl attacked today, Mikai rapidly skimmed the article again.

_The attack that left two Juuban teenagers in the hospital spread panic not only throughout Azabu High School, where the two victims attended school, but throughout the community. This youma incident was the first in which such drastic violence had actually been committed against the victims. Past attacks have resulted in energy draining or death as a result of the draining. Rarely have the youma perpetrated physical injury against anyone except the Sailor Senshi._

_In this event, however, the female victim, Azabu sophomore Tsukino Serena, has critical injuries and is still hospitalized. Doctors called her survival nothing short of miraculous._

_"She had lost a tremendous amount of blood when we received her," said Dr. Mizuno Marie _–

Mikai paused, brow furrowing. The name 'Mizuno' triggered some recognition in his mind… He could recall being surprised when he first read the article that a physician had violated patient privacy rules to speak to a newspaper about a patient's condition. Perhaps that was why he had recognized the name. He continued reading.

_– who was working in the emergency room when Tsukino was brought in by an ambulance. "Several ribs were broken and very close to piercing a lung."_

_The youma attack was the culmination of a night of excitement at the school's "Spring Fling" prom. Shortly after nine o'clock, a Senshi tentatively identified at Sailor Venus took student Osaka Molly hostage. Witnesses say that she threatened to kill Osaka unless Sailor Moon or Tuxedo Mask stepped forward._

_"I think she was insane," said Osaka in a phone interview. "She was shaking really unsteadily as she held onto me. And why else would she think that Sailor Moon would be at our high school prom?"_

_Shortly after seizing Osaka, Sailor Venus released her. Only minutes later, when faculty evacuated students from the premises and students went to the parking lot for their cars, a red Mustang was found idling in the center of the parking lot with his windshield smashed._

_"Blood was all over," said Azabu student Tonami Daikuno. "We were sure that someone had been murdered."_

_Students positively identified the car as belonging to Azabu junior Shields Darien. Blonde hair was found in the windshield that students insisted must belong to Tsukino._

_"When we saw that the car was Darien's, everyone thought of Serena," said Tonami, explaining that Shields and Tsukino were close friends. "When they found the hair, we _knew._ No one else has hair like Serena's." Tsukino's hair is blonde and falls "at least to her knees," Tonami said._

_A vigil of students in tuxedoes and glitter-spangled gowns gathered behind the yellow tape barrier as police searched the school and parking lot._

_"We didn't know what to do," said Osaka, who has been friends with Tsukino since grade school. "It was the first time that a youma had ever actually _taken _anyone – we just have to believe that it would bring them back."_

_Osaka recounted jokes that the students to lighten the atmosphere, joshing that if a youma was going to kidnap anyone, their worst choice was Tsukino Serena and Shields Darien._

_"We said, 'Darien'll kick the youma's butt if it lays a finger on Serena's head,' " Tonami said. "He's like a mother lion with its cub around Serena. I think that made us all feel a little more hopeful."_

_The hope turned out to be well-placed. Two hours into the vigil, classmate Kino Lita found Tsukino and Shields in the physical education grounds adjoining to the parking lot._

_"We searched the entire area without finding them," said police chief Daidouji Gou. "We think that the youma may have returned to this location after our search and left them there."_

_Witnesses to past youma attacks have seen the youma vanishing into voids that appear in thin air. This may have been the method used by the youma that attacked the high schoolers. What remains a mystery, along with many other aspects of the attack, is why the youma brought its two victims back at all._

_When they were found, Tsukino was unconscious and bleeding profusely. Shields was conscious and moving, "but he was moving weird," said Tonami. "Stumbling, so we thought that he had been hurt, too."_

_Shields and Tsukino were taken to the ER in ambulances. Tsukino's extensive flesh wounds healed over within two days, shocking doctors. Yet both victims suffer from lasting effects from the youma. Shields's eyes suffered a damage that the doctors have yet to identify that has left him blind. Doctors called the raised and oddly-colored scar tissue that had healed over Tsukino's wounds "worrisome and potentially dangerous."_

_Either adolescent could recall the events following the youma's attack of the car, said police, and both were kept in the hospital for extensive tests and observations to ensure their health._

_"No one can believe it happened," said Osaka of the event. "And to those two."_

_In the shock, however there is joy. "They got token by a youma, but they got back alive," said Tonami. "There's a lot to be thankful for."_

A frown flickered across Mikai's face as he realized that nothing in the article had piqued his memory. He scrolled down the screen, his tongue fiddling with the silver hoop that pierced his lower lip, and absently scanned the "Links to Other Articles" section.

_Stock Market Falls Two Points_, _Woman's Body Found in Harbor_, _Two Girls Missing_ –

That was it. He clicked on the last link. Even before the article appeared with the photos of the two missing girls, he remembered their names. A Rei Hino and an Ami Mizuno. The former the daughter of conservative Senator Takumi Hino and the latter the daughter of esteemed trauma physician Marie Mizuno – the same doctor interviewed about Serena Tsukino.

The Hino girl's photo was shown first; she was a stunning girl even with the guarded expression that she wore. So stunning, in fact, that most readers probably didn't even notice the photo of the second missing girl, Ami Mizuno. Mikai had noticed it, though, and he wondered now how he had been able to forget. The bird-boned face of the blue-haired girl wore a faint, jumpy smile, looking somewhere off to the side of the camera, as though looking for permission to smile. It was an expression that he could remember from the memories he had of his mother's face, and that similarity had been what caused him to take notice of the girl.

Looking at the photo now, there was no doubt that the frightened girl victimized by the youma was the same as the one in the photo, although her hair had darkened and lengthened… as though to disguise herself.

Frowning, Mikai reread the article. The reporter had focused almost exclusively on the Hino girl's disappearance, ostensibly because she was the daughter of an eminent senator.

_Although Rei's father, Senator Takumi Hino, was too distraught for comment, according to his personal representative, one of Rei's teachers, Sister Miya Leed, said that Rei had just been expelled from First Catholic Academy for Girls, where she attended school._

_"She became a rebellious presence in the school," Leed said. "She returned the kind overtures of her fellow students with a cold shoulder or insults. She became insulting and disobedient in class. Clearly, she was having a crisis of faith."_

_While Leed believes that Rei may have run away, investigators believe otherwise. At the same time that Rei disappeared, so did her close friend, fourteen year-old Azabu High student Ami Mizuno._

_Investigators did not discover Ami's disappearance, however, until a week later than Rei's disappearance was reported by her grandfather._

_Ami lived with her mother, ER physician Marie Mizuno. Mizuno said that because of her strenuous ER shifts and Ami's rigorous juku schedule, she and her daughter rarely saw each other at home. For this reason, Mizuno said, she did not realize that her daughter was missing._

_Ami was actually reported missing by the Mizunos' housekeeper, who noticed that nothing in Ami's bedroom had been moved in a week. Investigators were able to pinpoint her disappearance to the same day as that of Rei Hino._

_With the disappearance occurring on the heels of the youma attack at Azabu High, investigators have not ruled out the possibility of a youma factor in the girls' disappearance – especially because both Rei and Ami were friends of attack victim Serena Tsukino. Tsukino, recently released from the hospital as of the writing of this article, declined to comment on her friends' whereabouts._

Mikai scrolled down, scanning the rest of the article. Then he leaned back in his chair, worrying at his lip-ring as he stared at the computer screen.

After a minute he pulled up a new window and began checking a few of the more arcane blogs.

An idea was beginning to blossom in his mind.

L

Mercury's hand snapped to her visor as a warning message flashed across it.

"Shit."

Rei fell back from her attack stance, the fire in her hand vanishing with a smoky afterimage. "What?"

Mercury ignored her. Brows furrowed, she stared at the image being projected inside her now-opaque visor. Distractedly she ran a gloved hand through her hair. A shower of icicles rained down from the displaced strands.

"What are THOSE?" said Rei, eyeing them suspiciously.

"Crystallized perspiration," replied Mercury without moving her eyes away from her visor. Yet somehow she saw Rei's revolted expression, for she said, "We can't all automatically evaporate our glandular excretions into the air for other people to inhale. Now shut up, I'm trying to watch."

Rei frowned at her again; Mercury ignored it, turning away.

After a moment, her shoulders visibly relaxed beneath her fuku collar. She turned back around, her visor transparent once more, and beckoned to Rei to continue attacking.

Rei made no move to obey. "What was it?"

"Nothing to do with your dear Asanuma," said Mercury flippantly. "No need for you to be concerned."

Rei's face turned pink; she growled and hurled a ball of flame at Mercury.

Mercury spun out of its way, laughing, but on the inside she was wondering what to do about this most irksome of Shittenou who had somehow discovered the alternate identities of Endymion's reincarnation and the Inner Senshi.

L

"Haven't you gotten tired of her yet?"

"Not really." Haruka finished knotting her Infinity School tie and glanced over at Michiru. "She's a sweet kid."

Michiru hummed noncommittally, rearranging the pile of sketchbooks on her desk.

"Why?" Haruka grinned over her shoulder as she swung a leg over the windowsill. "Are you jealous?"

Michiru pushed her swivel chair away from the desk and got up to begin writing the next day's assignment on the whiteboard. "No, I'm just reminding you not to get too attached to the enemy." She capped the marker. "We're here to find the princess, remember."

"My dear Michiru."

Michiru caught her breath. Almost involuntarily, she found herself turning around, meeting Haruka's penetrating blue eyes.

Haruka smiled. "The princess is my first and _only_ concern."

She turned back around and pushed off from the windowsill, disappearing to the ground.

Michiru slumped back against the whiteboard. The marker tray dug into her back. "I know, Haruka," she mumbled at the floor. "I know."

L

"Oh, look, Serena, Haruka-san's here to walk you home again!"

Asanuma felt like punching Lita in the face. He really did.

No, no, wait. What he wanted even more than punching Lita in the face himself was for Darien to go punch this mother-effing '_Haruka-san'_ in the face. He glanced over to tell this to his friend – but his eyes caught on the light-haired man leaning against the entrance gate, and the words died on his throat.

"What?" Darien's voice was alert. Apparently he had noticed the spike in Asanuma's heart rate.

Asanuma's brows furrowed. "That's – " – _the guy who asked me if I knew where Rei was at that campaign fundraiser forever ago_!

He found his voice and swung around to look at Serena and Lita. "THAT'S Haruka Tennou?"

The threat in Lita's voice was as tangible as a punch in the guts. "Yes." Unspoken was her demand, '_So what, idiot?'_

Asanuma slapped on a wide smile. "Why, we're jolly old chums! I didn't realize who you were talking about before! How about giving me a minute to catch up with the old chap, eh?"

He pushed past them without waiting for an answer, knowing that Serena, at least, would fall for his big fat lie and keep the others back for a few minutes.

Tennou lowered his sunglasses to eye Asanuma as the blond strode toward him.

"Do I know you?" he said when Asanuma halted in front of him.

Asanuma smiled widely, grabbing the guy's skinny arm and pulling him into a hug.

"Play along with me, will you?" he said, pounding the guy's back. "I'm trying to make my girlfriend jealous."

The dude sputtered. "You're mistaken – " He tried to break away.

Asanuma held on tight.

"Hey, don't I know you?" he exclaimed as though only recognizing it for the first time. "I _do_! Remember me? 'Sunny sense of humor?' You said you liked me!" He twisted Tennou's arm behind his back, keeping close to him so that anyone watching would not notice anything amiss. "But you never called."

Tennou went stiff.

"Oh, so you do remember." Asanuma dropped the bright voice but not Tennou's arm. "The name Rei Hino ring a bell?"

If Tennou stiffened further this time, Asanuma couldn't feel it; his own fingers were trembling so badly with the effort to contain the fire that wanted to burst from his fingertips and char the man's hand off.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Tennou said. "I think you've confused me with someone – "

"NO I HAVEN'T!"

Asanuma's voice came out a roar. He smelled the faintest scent of smoke. He forced his fingers to unpry from Tennou's arm.

"Look, I have no clue what you're – "

"Shut up!" yelled Asanuma. "Shut up! What do you do, do you find nice girls and sweet-talk them before you dump them in a ditch and go after their friends next? Where the _fuck_ is Rei?"

"I don't know what you're saying – "

"ASANUMA!"

Two voices shouted his name, one concerned and the other furious.

A pair of iron hands seized his elbows and spun him around; he lashed at them and heard Lita snarl a curse at him. Her knuckles beat into him and he beat back –

"Stop! Stop it!" A flash of gold entered his tunnel vision, almost instantly followed by black.

Asanuma found himself slamming back onto his butt. He blinked, shaking his head like a wet dog, and saw Lita mirroring his position a few feet from him.

"How COULD you?" Serena looked down at them both, wide-eyed and lips parted.

Beside her, but not as close to her as Haruka Tennou was, Darien stood, stone-faced.

Asanuma knew the feeling of Darien's punches by now: he knew that it was Darien who had yanked him away from accidentally hitting Serena and thrown him to the ground.

"Rena, it was just a misunderstanding," Tennou began. "Asanuma mistook me for someone I wasn't – "

"Who? Mr. Punching Bag?" Lita swiped a fist across her mouth, straightening. "I swear to God, Asanuma – "

Asanuma ignored them all, stared hard at Darien instead. Even if no one else appeared to have heard them, Darien with his acute hearing would have heard all that he had said to Tennou, would understand that it wasn't safe for Tennou to be around Serena, would speak up and tell them all off –

"Come on. You need to cool off." Darien held a hand down to Asanuma.

Asanuma stared up at it. This was not – this was NOT happening –

"Asanuma, are you okay?" Serena hunkered down in front of him, arms around her knees. Asanuma stared at her, too. "Who did you think Haruka-san was?"

Idiots.

Idiots, all of them.

Asanuma shoved to his feet and shouldered past them. He felt rage burning beneath his skin like lava. He was a volcano about to blow.

Darien caught his arm as he stalked past them. "Asanuma – "

"Darien, if you can sense a single thing, you know I am this close to exploding," Asanuma snarled. "And I don't mean metaphorically."

Darien released him. Asanuma strode down the sidewalk, only breaking into a sprint when he was out of sight around the corner.

L

Rini looked up from her Cardcaptor Sakura manga as she felt the aura speeding up toward her. She scrambled to her feet, poised to make a break for it if the aura didn't belong to who she expected.

But Asanuma's familiar blonde head rounded the edge of the school entrance a minute later, and he didn't appear to be on fire despite his blazing aura. She watched him look around.

She stepped out from behind the tree she had taken as shelter. "I'm right here." She frowned at him, then added, "If it's me you're looking for."

Asanuma put on a smile as she approached. "Who else would I be looking for?"

Rini regarded him. Then she shook her head. "No one. Are you picking me up today?"

Asanuma mirrored her thoughtful regard as he examined her with a frown. "Who's supposed to pick you up today?"

"Serena." Rini couldn't stop the scowl that surfaced on her face. "And possibly _that person_."

"Haruka Tennou."

It wasn't a question, and Rini felt a spike in Asanuma's aura, the same boiling wrath that had alerted her to his arrival a few moments ago.

His hot fingers closed suddenly around her hand. "C'mon. I'm taking you for a treat."

Rini stared at their hands as he began to walk, digging her heels into the mulch. "You didn't tell Serena."

"No, I didn't." Asanuma turned his head to look over his shoulder down at her.

"She'll worry."

"Will she?" Asanuma's voice was a mutter. "Doubt it, with _Haruka Tennou_ around."

He probably had not intended for her to hear it, but Rini had. It was her fate, it seemed, as her father's daughter, to hear things unintended for her and unwanted by her. She dug her heels deeper into the mulch and looked stubbornly at her shoes.

"Rini." Asanuma gave her hand a tug. "C'mon. You don't like that Tennou guy, do you?"

"No," said Rini. "But I don't like you much right now either."

Asanuma let go of her hand to throw his own up.

"Why will no one LISTEN to me?" he shouted at the sky.

"Because you talk too much."

He looked down at her without lowering his hands. "It was a rhetorical question."

Rini just looked at him.

Asanuma yanked his hands back down, only to thrust them into his hair with a frustrated exhalation.

"Am I insane, Rini? Tell me honestly. Do I look insane? Or stupid? What?"

Rini kept looking at him. At last, she said, "Maybe you should explain what happened."

"Good." Asanuma lifted a finger and shook it emphatically. "Good idea. You know Rei, right? Of course you know Rei, you knew about that painting I'm doing of her – she disappeared, right? Last spring. And I looked for her. Like crazy I looked for her, snuck out of the house, didn't come home for days, made my parents freaking pissed."

He paused, looked at her to make sure that she was still listening. She lifted her eyebrows at him. He resumed.

"So finally I gave up. They dragged me home and all but cuffed me to the house, and then they take me to this campaign fundraiser. And I'm sitting there, minding my own business, when some guy comes over and asks me if I know where Rei is! And then he LEAVES! Like some psychopath murderer – and I find out today that it was HARUKA TENNOU! I'd swear to God, it's the same dude, all skinny and has eyelashes like an effing girl…"

He trailed off.

Rini lifted a brow when he looked over at her. "Are you finished?"

His shoulders slumped a little; he frowned. "You don't appreciate what's going on here either."

"Don't I?" Rini smiled humorlessly at him. She missed her Asanuma, the one who treated her like an adult. "I don't like him either."

"It's not a matter of liking!" said Asanuma. "This guy is bad news, Rini, and no one will LISTEN to me about that!"

"Because you go insane whenever it comes to Rei," retorted Rini. "You hear the slightest bit of nonsense that has a one in a million chance of being related to her and you go into a frenzy every time. But every time you've been wrong. You still haven't found her. So no one believes you anymore. You're the boy who cried wolf."

Asanuma sighed, reviewing in his mind all the times that he had pitched a Rei-fut. The time with the near-fatal car crash especially… Maybe he _was _wrong…

He sighed again. "So I've been an idiot."

"Yes," confirmed Rini. "Love appears to do that to people." She looked at him, lips compressing. "But no one blames Darien for doing it."

A snort escaped Asanuma. He pulled his gaze back out of space and looked at Rini. "Let's go do something. I'll call Darien and have him tell Serena that I've got you."

Rini's eyes narrowed as she regarded him, doing that inspection thing before she spoke. "You want to," she said, half questioning. "Really want to? Not just…because…"

"I really want to." Asanuma stayed sitting, staring at her.

She stared back, lips mashed together. "I have homework."

"I see. So you're forcing me to kidnap you, huh?" Suddenly Asanuma had grabbed her up, and she was staring at the back of his school blazer, blood rushing to her head as she dangled over his shoulder. "Well, that's not hard."

He began to whistle, heading toward the entrance. "How do you feel about miniature golf? I play it a different way, whoever takes the most times to get the ball in wins. That way we get the most for our money. How 'bout that, huh?"

Rini grumbled and kicked at him in token resistance, but against his blazer she found herself smiling. Maybe her Asanuma wasn't as far away as she had thought.

L

Darien ground his teeth as the doorbell buzzed. He forced himself to push the irritation away from him. The effort was as in vain as being in an ocean and trying to push away water.

He decided not to open the door.

"Darien, I'm ninety-nine point three percent sure you're in there," called the knocker through the door. "It's Mikai. Open the door, PLEASE?"

Curiosity slightly piqued, Darien focused on transforming his nose into a dog's muzzle. He sniffed and scented the unmistakable odor of oil and sweat. It was Mikai alright, not a foaming-at-the-mouth Asanuma, as he had half-expected. But Darien wasn't in the mood for company, even that of Mikai's amusing wit.

He wasn't in the mood for anything, really. Even training. But he had been on his way to Elysion to continue training with Helios. Keeping himself from spontaneously transforming was requiring more and more effort as Haruka Tennou minced his cologne-drenched playboy self to the school gate every afternoon.

"Dude. Darien."

Darien heard scratching, then the sudden gust of air from his door swinging open. His heart rate spiked. Mikai would see the dog muzzle on his face – he spun away from the door, lifting his hand to cover his face. As quickly as he could, he forced the fur, whiskers, and soft nose to melt back into his human nose, but speed was a skill that he had yet to master.

"Sorry about that, man. Don't worry, I didn't break the lock, just picked it. Hey, are you okay?"

"Fine," Darien bit out, turning at last to face him as he felt the last of the fur being reabsorbed.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to push the irritation back behind his eyeballs. "What do you want, Mikai?"

Mikai's reply took a moment. Darien's brain raced in panic, certain that somehow Mikai must have seen his transformed nose.

But Mikai only said, "You look really stressed, man. I noticed the last time I saw you. I was thinking I could take you out for a relaxing dinner or something."

Despite himself a small flame of amusement flickered across Darien's face. "Are you asking me for a date?"

Mikai didn't miss a beat. "I'm assuming the homosexuality cracks are an inside joke among your group? Serena called me your friend's '_Darien-rival.'_ "

Darien stiffened. The space behind his eyeballs was growing hot and tight again. "You met Serena?"

"Yeah," said Mikai. "She's_ nice_. And her legs are even nicer, if you know what I mean. Where'd you meet her again?"

After so many days of training with Helios, so many times hearing Haruka Tennou flirt with Serena and containing the urge to rip and kill and tear, Darien should have been able to control the transformations. But Mikai's tone, the suggestiveness in his voice when he spoke about Serena, when he knew – he _knew_ – that she was _MINE_ –

Darien seized his head. A grunt escaped him. He was sure that he could feel his fingers lengthening, the cold hard claws biting into his scalp to release hot trickles of blood. Felt the thing inside him, rising like his gorge. He pushed back at it, heaving as though trying to move the Great Wall of China.

"Shit." Dimly Darien felt Mikai crouch down beside him. "You okay? I shouldn't have goaded you."

Somehow Mikai's voice did what Darien himself had been unable to do. The consciousness inside him recoiled, falling deep back into Darien like a sting ray settling back along the ocean floor to wait for its next chance at its prey.

"Darien. Darien. Come on, man. I didn't mean it, okay? She's not my type."

Darien eased his hands away from his head.

They weren't furry and clawed anymore; he could feel that, but they had been. And Mikai had to have noticed that they had been. So why the non-reaction? Why couldn't he just exclaim shock and disgust or fascination so that Darien could wipe his memory the same way that he had Serena's family?

Why, though, had Mikai's voice been able to push Endymion back down? And why in the hell had he goaded him in the first place?

"You okay, dude?"

Darien compressed his lips, waiting. He was sure that Mikai would find a very entertaining way to demand how he could transform into a dog, something like, 'Wow, did you get bitten by a radioactive poodle?'

But it didn't come.

"Dude, Darien, I am NOT picking you up. You're scrawny, but you're not that scrawny."

If Mikai wasn't suspicious now, then he would be if Darien kept crouching on the floor. He stood up, lowering his hand and still wondering how Mikai could have not noticed the transformation. Perhaps his transformations were more subtle than Helios had led him to believe. Perhaps all this training had given him a better control than he realized.

"Sorry," he told Mikai. "Migraines."

"Really?" Was that a note of interest in Mikai's voice? Well, perhaps that wasn't so remarkable, considering that the current mechanic had entertained ambitions of becoming a physician for a while. "How often you been having those?"

"Not often," lied Darien wearily. He needed to go to Elysion. He needed to get himself under control.

_"The Terran prince welcomes Chaos…and becomes one of its warriors."_

"I've got a lot of homework." Darien walked to his desk and sat down. "I'll have to take a rain check on dinner."

"Ah. Okay." Mikai didn't move, though. "Listen, Dare, if you need help with anything, I'm around, okay? You know…homework, getting groceries, babysitting – hell, even dusting a youma!"

Darien's fingers froze on the computer keys. After a moment, he squeezed out, "What?"

Mikai began to laugh. "I didn't tell you? Oh, man, Darien, it was the most amazing thing! This youma showed up by the shop the other day! I waited for a Senshi to show up – I was really hoping one would show up, Sailor Mercury's my favorite, you know?"

Mikai paused here; Darien felt the weight of his eyes on him, undoubtedly suspicious of his inordinately shocked reaction to _hell, even dusting a youma!_ He forced himself to relax degree by degree. Of course Mikai had only been joking. If he really did know Darien was Tuxedo Mask, he would have done something about it already, like steal a blood sample from Darien to confirm his hypothesis.

This thought made Darien frown. Surreptitiously, he leaned away from Mikai, bringing all his limbs out of easy reach.

Then he realized that Mikai was still waiting. He forced a response. "Sailor Mercury, huh?"

"Yeah. Mercury. Or Mars. You know."

He paused again. Darien pictured Asanuma's reaction if he heard Mikai expressing a preference for Rei. It would be very bloody, very fiery, or both. Then he grimaced, thinking of his own reaction to Mikai's opinion of Serena. His fingers clenched.

"Yeah. Sailor Mercury." Mikai paused, probably waiting for Darien to pay attention to him again. "So. The youma showed up, and no Senshi did, so I took out a blowtorch and incinerated the sucker."

Darien's brows rose; he smiled despite himself. "Wow. Nice."

"Yeah." Mikai's reply was short; he still seemed to be expecting something. More flattery, Darien decided.

"That's incredible," Darien said. "I'm supremely envious. Wish I could kill a youma." _Not. I hate my life._

Mikai made a sound that seemed frustrated.

"Sorry about that," Mikai replied. "So…I'll let you get to it, then." But he didn't move.

"Yeah. Lots of homework. Lots and lots of it." Darien swiveled back around in his chair to place his hands on the computer keyboard again.

"You've got voice software on that now so you can use it?" Mikai's voice came from above his shoulder. "I could rig it with some dictation software if you don't have it yet – "

"Goodbye, Mikai."

"Okay." Mikai finally walked toward the door. "Just saying. Offer's still open."

"Yeah," said Darien, wishing that he could sound as sincere as he felt. And that he could feel as sincerely as he should. But all he could manage was begrudging resentment, angered by the fact that he needed help, angered by the fact that he had been able to feel so murderous toward his friends, first Asanuma and now Mikai. He needed to get Elysion. "Thanks."

"See ya."

"Bye."

The door clicked shut behind Mikai. With his psychometry, Darien followed his friend's footsteps down the hallway. Once he was in the elevator and descending, Darien walked over to the door, locked it, and closed his eyes to go to Elysion.

As he opened his eyes and saw the blue sky and flower-carpeted hills stretching out before him, the thought hit him.

_"Listen, Dare, if you need help with anything, I'm around, okay? You know…homework, getting groceries, babysitting – hell, even dusting a youma!"_

Thanks to their prolonged exposure to him, his two closest friends had indeed ended up helping him dust youma. Had ended up roped into the Shittenou's place, with all the powers, dangers, and soul-enslavement those positions implied.

If he continued his friendship with Mikai, how long would it be before Mikai ended up in the same cage?

L

Rubeus leaned back in his chair as in his hand, the recording crystal projected a hologram of the blonde-haired Senshi incinerating a youma with a beam of light. "And you're sure this will work, Bertie?"

"Rubeus, darling, you've taken statistics. Of course it's not one hundred percent foolproof." Bertie paused in her calculation of the angles of Moon's attack to glance over at her superior. "But the fact that the plan is of my concoction increases its likelihood of success to ninety-eight percent."

"Are you ninety-eight percent that just because Prisma saw her wearing the uniform that the little princess goes to that high school?"

" Not at all," said Bertie gaily. "But even if she doesn't, if I show up there, the little moon darling will as well, and then I can make her lead me to the princess. Moreover, in the nonexistent possibility that neither of those scenarios comes to pass, we'll still have a whole building full of squirming juvenile and adolescent energy ripe for the taking to repair the ship's crystals."

Rubeus grimaced. "I wish that I had your confidence, Bertie."

"It's because you've been spending too much time with Wiseman, darling. He's a positive black hole for positive feelings. Just look what he's done to His Highness! He hasn't been the same since he went to speak with Chaos and came back with that horrible mass of ectoplasm."

Rubeus's fingers clenched around the recording crystal in his hand. "Indeed," he murmured. Straightening, he said, "Speaking of His Highness, he wished to be kept aware of our progress. I'll take the crystal to him. But, Bertie – "

Bertie glanced up from her calculations again. "Yes, Rubeus?"

His eyes bored into hers. "Be careful what you say."

L

Mercury sighed, inspecting her nails again. She had been sitting here in the Terran's dark living room for at least twenty minutes. When would he – ah. That was the door opening. She leaned back on the sofa cushion and waited for him to discover her presence.

His footsteps padded into the room. She saw his light eyes in the darkness land on her.

Disappointingly, he didn't flinch. Instead, he smiled and snapped his fingers. The lamp on the coffee table next to her lit itself.

"Why, Sailor Mercury," he said. "What a pleasant surprise."

"For you, I'm sure." Mercury returned his smile cordially.

"Of course," he said, sitting down. He crossed his legs and spread his arms across the top of the sofa, the epitome of an arrogant Terran male. Mercury suppressed the reflex to curl her lip. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Instead, she smiled more widely. "I'm certain a clever boy like yourself knows the answer to that question."

The Shittenou's peculiarly pierced eyebrow twitched. He leaned forward, digging into her eyes with his own. She smiled, willing to let him try. No one could dig through ice.

At last he leaned back again and said, "Are you _stalking_ me?"

"Not in that connotation, no – "

She paused to examine him more closely, intrigued by the miniscule facial cue in his jaw. When her brain interpreted it she laughed aloud. "Caduceus, no! Did you honestly imagine…?"

She laughed again, cackling even more deliciously as she imagined the reaction that Ami Mizuno would have had to this Terran's interest.

Her amusement was becoming inefficient, however, and she ceased it, resuming the conversation with a drastic drop in the temperature of her tone. "I wouldn't have glanced at you twice if you hadn't become so irksomely inquisitive." She paused for him to digest this. "You saw Darien Shields transform today."

"I did." The Terran's attempt at an expressionless face, as though she hadn't just shot him down like a comet from the sky, released an amused torrent of dopamine from her synapses again, but she ignored the urge to laugh. This moment was a very crucial one to her plan, and Shittenou Number Three wouldn't play along with her plan if she injured his delicate male pride too severely.

He arched his pierced brow again. "The significance to you being…?"

"You wanted to be capable of providing him with aid." Mercury crossed her legs, folded her hands on her knee, and waited for him to respond properly.

A moment passed without him speaking, only smiling politely at her with his ridiculous red hair. Then another moment. And another.

"Well?" she said, her smile still frozen on her face.

"Well?" he echoed back. "I assumed you hadn't finished talking. Since you didn't answer my question. Or ask me one."

Fine! Fine. Let Minako's Terran be an aggravating bastard. Malachite had always been too timid anyway.

Mercury swallowed her irritation and said, "I would be willing to teach you how to help Mr. Shields in combat. For a price."

"Mr. Shields?" echoed the Terran with amusement evident in his voice. Then he continued, "You're going to show a human how to keep up with someone who's clearly not human. And that's in exchange for me not telling them about you, I imagine?"

Mercury drummed her fingers on her knee and gave him a properly unimpressed look. "They know about me."

But he _laughed_. "No, they don't. Darien didn't react when I mentioned you today. And you don't want them to know, obviously, because you ran away." He eyed her speculatively. "Why is that, I wonder?"

Mercury stood. "My apologies for having purposelessly consumed your time – "

Fingers closed around her wrist. Her eyes snapped to them, then up to the Terran face inches from hers.

"What did you do with Ami Mizuno?"

She smiled at him. "Let go."

His fingers tightened, he opened his mouth to say something – she snapped his wrist in two.

"I told you to let go."

He wasn't crouched on the floor, writhing in pain, as she would have preferred. But his teeth were biting down hard on his cheek to keep from screaming, she saw with a bland smile.

"Perhaps now you'll have learned your lesson about disobeying Senshi." She tapped her chin. "But I doubt it. You're a Terran, after all. Well. Shall I train you or not? I assure you, I have excellent credentials."

But the Terran wasn't paying attention to her anymore; he was staring at his wrist. His wrist that was no longer hanging bonelessly but faintly glowing instead.

"Oh, I forgot to mention – " Mercury paused. " – you're not exactly human." She smiled her very widest. "So. Ready to begin?"

L

"Although I doubt many of you will be pleased by the results of last week's test – " Ms. Haruna cleared her throat as she passed out the exams. " – I'm sure you'll all be thrilled to learn that the location for the annual winter carnival with Juuban Primary has been decided."

"Winter carnival?" Lita whispered, leaning toward Serena.

Serena looked up from the test paper in her hands, at which she had been making a face – her math grades had made a steep downward slope this year without Darien to tutor her. She crumpled the test up along with her discouragement and smiled brightly.

"Yeah!" she whispered back. "The high school does it every year, we put on a Christmas carnival for the elementary school kids! It's so much fun, Lita, you'll love it, Motoki was the Santa Clause last year – "

"I see that YOU would like to explain the carnival to everyone, Serena?"

Serena went silent and red, swallowing as Ms. Haruna's question brought the attention of the whole class crashing down on her.

"Um," she squeaked. "No thanks, Ms. Haruna."

Ms. Haruna smiled and laughed, not unkindly, then continued, "For those of you who don't know, every year the high school organizes and carries out a winter festival for the elementary school. Usually each class and club will sign up to run an activity or booth… we always have at least three gingerbread house booths and candy-cane cake-walks and the infamous Santa Claus and the elves picture-taking…"

She paused to give everyone time to laugh as they recalled Motoki's bang-up impersonation of Santa the year before, and the far more hilarious sight of Asanuma as a pointy-shoed elf.

"Hopefully we'll be able to dig up a photo of last year for you to see, Ms. Kino. Anyway, sign-ups for the booths and different jobs as well as voting on what your class will be doing will be next week. This week – " Ms. Haruna shook a sheet of paper. " – we've found out where we're going to have the festival. And that place is the skating rink."

"The skating rink!" Serena's exclamation joined the chorus of excitement that burst out among the class. "Wow! We've always had it outside in the field before! This is going to be aMAZing! Right, Lita?"

Lita nodded distractedly, still ensnared by the prospect of seeing Motoki in a Santa suit. She cackled quietly to herself, eliciting a sweatdrop from Serena.

"You know, Lita," she said slyly, elbowing her friend in the ribs. "If Motoki was Mr. Claus again this year, I wonder who would be _Mrs._ Claus…"

Lita's face lost its amusement and suddenly took on a look of horror as she imagined herself in a white wig and itchy red dress in the midst of a bunch of snotty-nosed kids. On second thought…

L

"The skating rink, the skating rink, the skating rink!" Asanuma rejoiced, grabbing Serena's hands and clasping them in his own as she sat down at the lunch table. "Did you hear, Serena-chan? Aren't you excited? It's like Christmas a month early! AND I've already started this year's campaign for have Motoki elected the jolly red-suited man, a.k.a. the reindeer-loving pedophile – oof!"

"I haven't ice-skated in years," said Lita thoughtfully, having neatly disposed of Asanuma and his perverted babble by placing a fist in his spleen, this week's Target Organ of Choice. "I don't know if I even remember how to do it anymore. Wanna go practice with me, Serena?"

Serena looked up from where she was pulling Asanuma from underneath the table. The reproachful expression on her face became the look she always got when she was chewing her lip.

"Actually, Lita-chan," she began. "I've never ice-skated before."

"NEVER?" repeated Lita and Asanuma, aghast.

They were momentarily distracted by Darien pulling out the chair at the end of the table furthest from Serena. Lita eyed him beadily, a wordless approval of the distance between him and her self-assigned charge, and then looked at Serena again.

"Not even once?"

"She did once," said Motoki, who was now sitting down between Lita and Darien. "During the field trip two years ago, remember, Usa?"

Serena went slightly pink. "I'd rather not."

Asanuma smothered a snort into his napkin. "Oh, yeah. I remember now."

"What?" demanded Lita.

"Another Serena-Darien embarrassing moment that you wouldn't want to hear about on account of how adorable it was," Asanuma said baldly, smacking his lips loudly as he opened his milk carton. "She fell and sprained her ankle and he beat Seiko to picking her up off the ice."

Serena flushed darker and took a hurried bite of her grilled cheese, while the soda can that Darien set back on the table had finger-deep indentations in the metal.

Anyway," said Asanuma, "it happened nearly as soon as she got on the ice, so she didn't exactly get to skate. Want me to teach you, Serena-chan?"

"Th-that's okay – "

"_I_'ll teach you," Lita declared. "We can't have you falling flat on your face in front of a bunch of grade-schoolers and embarrassing Buji and Rini."

Asanuma nudged Darien's leg with his foot. "Hey, Romeo, this is the part where you say, 'How would that be different from any other day?' "

Serena winced, expecting Asanuma to be taken down by a double effort of Lita AND Darien's fists, but the impact that she expected didn't come.

She cracked one eyelid open. Then both of them, wide-eyed at the sight of Asanuma, his fingers gripping Lita's fist, appearing to have blocked her punch an inch away from his stomach. But he wasn't looking at Lita, he was staring at Darien. Who, Serena saw when she glanced over, was eating as calmly as though Asanuma hadn't made an allusion to – _oh._ Serena realized that there wasn't any reason for Darien to be angry. Why should he care if Asanuma made jokes about them being a couple? He didn't like her like that; he'd told her so. She was the only one who felt acute embarrassment and bitter disappointment when their relationship – that had never existed in the first place – was brought up. Why hadn't she realized this before? Had she somehow unconsciously been operating under the assumption that he really did like her, that he had straight-out lied to her about not loving her romantically, that it was just an act that he would drop when the moon princess arrived and he had told her sorry, the soul mate thing's off, I love Serena?

As soon as the thought occurred to her, she realized that she had. She _had_ thought that.

"Serena?"

At Lita's voice she flinched and realized that the expression on her face was as shocked and disappointed as Asanuma's. She snapped the expression in two with a bright smile, ashamed of herself. She didn't love Darien. If she really loved him, she wouldn't have wanted him to lose control at Asanuma's taunting and turn into an animal, revealing his powers to the entire school. _Selfish._

But even more selfish were the words that she felt emerging from her mouth. "I'd love for you to teach me, Lita-chan, but Haruka-kun already promised he would. Do you want to come with us? Motoki, you too? You could meet Haruka-kun."

Darien's fork faltered on the path to his mouth. She saw it from the corner of her mouth.

"That would be wonderful, Serena," said Motoki quickly and graciously. "But I'm pretty booked up for the next couple of weeks. Dare, I was wondering, could you help me with the function differentiation problems? I left my book in my locker, we've gotta go get it – Asanuma, you didn't understand them either, c'mon – "

Asanuma was staring at Serena as though he had never seen her before. Serena swallowed, looking away.

"Yeah." Asanuma's chair scraped the floor as he stood up. "I failed that makeup test, I need to ace this one. C'mon, Dare."

Serena no longer had the courage to look over at Darien, but she didn't hear him getting up.

"Dare," said Asanuma. "Come on."

"Wait a second," said Darien's voice. "I'm not done eating yet."

Disbelief yanked Serena's eyes to him. There he sat chewing calmly. Unaffected by her pathetic attempt. Hot water burned in her eyes.

She pushed back in her chair. "That reminds me, I've got math homework too! I totally forgot! See you later, guys!"

_Stupid. Stupid stupid – you should at least have apologized!_

For what? she thought bitterly. He hadn't even noticed that she had been trying to make him jealous.

A hand grabbed her wrist as she burst through the cafeteria doors. She gasped and swung around, her other hand immediately grabbing her brooch.

"Relax, it's me." Lita loosened her grip slightly. "You okay?"

Serena let her hand drop from her brooch. She felt an urge to shake Lita's grasp off, and it bothered her even more. Her friend was trying to comfort her, and this was how Serena reacted? What was she turning into?

She avoided Lita's gaze, shaking her head, her hair flying over her shoulders to hide her face like a scarf. She didn't trust herself to talk. She didn't trust her judgment anymore.

"You did the right thing, Serena."

Serena's gaze snapped up. Lita met her shocked stare, and her eyes seemed greener than usual.

"No," said Serena slowly, something inside her stirring at the sight of Lita's eyes. "No, it…" What she had done was a lot of things… pathetic…selfish… what had she done? Her concentration blurred, tilting…

"Serena!"

Abruptly the world righted itself. Serena blinked and rubbed her wrist as the courtyard and Lita's face re-resolved themselves in front of her. "Miss Kaioh?"

"What are you doing?" asked Miss Kaioh, stepping close to her and Lita.

Serena blinked up at Lita. Lita blinked back, not appearing to have any more answer than Serena did.

"Um," said Serena. "Daydreaming, I guess. It's healthy to take short naps in the middle of the day, you know."

"Hmm," said Miss Kaioh. "Perhaps. But not in the middle of the sidewalk. I came to ask if you could come to class early and help me mix some of the oil paints for the freshman class?"

"Yeah," said Serena. "Yeah, of course. See you later, Lita."

"Do you often daydream like that?" asked Miss Kaioh as she and Serena walked down the electives hallway.

Serena blinked again; she had been trying to remember what she and Lita had been doing. "No. Not really."

"Hmm," said Miss Kaioh again. She put on a paint-spattered smock, handed one to Serena to put on, then handed her a tightly sealed can of paint. "Pour about fifty milliliters of that into each tray."

Serena walked over to the first easel and gritted her teeth as she tried to pry open the can's lid. When it popped open, the dark blue paint inside was the exact shade that Darien's eyes had been when…when…

"Serena!" Miss Kaioh's voice rang out; suddenly there were hands around her wrists again. "You've gotten it all over your hands, let's clean you up…"

Serena stared at Miss Kaioh's white fingers trapping her wrists, at the dark paint covering her hands, but she didn't see them. She was remembering what she had said in the cafeteria.

L

" – and, ah, lastly for today's announcements, Coach Etoukou needs all of the, uh, track team members to report to the gym immediately after school for an informational meeting about the upcoming season. He, ah, asks that Shields and Tsukino be reminded that this, ah, includes them. That is all. Have a, ah, good day, students."

The intercom crackled back to quietness and Darien exhaled inaudibly. Damn it.

"I didn't know you were on the track team," said Motoki, almost as inaudibly.

"I'm not," said Darien simply. He didn't feel like explaining any further.

But Motoki's quiet "Oh" inflated guilt in his gut. Oblivious though he had acted to Serena's mention of Tennou today, he had been as unable to ignore its sting as a man impaled with an electric drill. And he had been equally unoblivious to Motoki and Asanuma's indignant support of him. Even though he knew that Serena hadn't intended to hurt him with bringing up Haruka – indeed, how could she, she thought that he felt nothing but platonic fondness for her! he thought almost hysterically – Motoki and Asanuma's indignation had salved something inside him. Yet here he sat, brushing Motoki off like a piece of undesirable lint.

"He made Serena sign a contract last year," he said quietly. "Long story short, now we're both obliged to run in track meets for him."

"But minors can't be held responsible – "

"I know that," said Darien, wearily. "But you know Serena's all about doing the noble thing…"

Motoki did not say anything.

The bell rang and Darien stood. "Can you patrol tonight?"

"Huh?"

"Can you patrol tonight?" Darien's voice was already quiet, but he lowered it even further, manipulating the air around them so that the sounds waves of his voice were transmitted only through the air to Motoki's ears, not in any other direction. "I want to train with Helios." _More like I _need_ to train._

"Oh. Um. Yeah. Of course. Sure."

"Thanks." Darien headed out of the room, gingerly through the teeming halls to the gymnasium.

She was easy to sense – as always – but he was used to sensing her in the midst of others, a star at the center of a constellation. But she sat alone, isolated from the other students that Darien felt and heard clambering up and down the bleachers, and it made her shine seem dimmer.

He did not feel at all confident enough to sit with her, but it would not fit with his act not to sit near her. That would reveal that he couldn't control himself around her, would reveal that he did love her, as he had tried very hard to do – and maybe succeeded in doing – at lunch.

When he lowered his weight onto the bleacher next to her he felt her start. He paused.

"Darien."

Her voice was miserable. Perhaps sitting next to her wasn't the best idea.

"Yes?" he said, still standing, his foot still on the next step, about to move away.

"I'm sorry!"

_Damn it._ She had noticed his flinch at her mention of Haruka at lunch; he had thought he had hidden it so well. But she had sensed it anyway – probably through the rope, he realized, and resolved to cut off that contact from now on – and now she was apologizing for hurting him, which meant that she thought – _knew _– that he was jealous, and he couldn't let her think that –

"Sorry?" He removed his foot from the step and plopped down next to her on the bleacher. Then he tugged on one of her hair tails. "You signed a contract with me not to say sorry anymore. Are you going to honor a contract you made with Coach but not one with me?"

He felt her pull away, her hair slithering from his hand.

He seized it back, irritation spiking in him ever so briefly. Quickly he let go again. "And even if you were allowed to say sorry, what do you have to apologize for? Did you crash my car without telling me?"

This time she laughed. It was a strange-sounding laugh, too high and too short, and before five minutes ago he would have used the rope to find out why. But he had resolved not to, and he was bothered on top of that by how close he had come to grabbing her hair and using it to yank her to him.

So he did not ask. He let her make her laugh and did not demand to know why it was not genuine.

"TSUKINOANDSHIELDS!" Coach's voice rang out in the echoing gymnasium. "What, you think I called you here to flirt? Get over here with the rest of the team!"

Serena stood up and walked toward the other end of the bleachers. Darien followed her, trying not to remember the days when she would have grabbed his hand and led him to a seat big enough for two.

"Thank you," Coach rumbled. "Now, I'm sure you all know why you're here – "

"No," said a familiar voice. It belonged to Tonami, one of Darien's classmates. "It's only just now December! Practices don't even start until January!"

"Oho, Tonami! So you think that just because it's almost Christmas you can slack off?"

"Yes!" Tonami retorted exuberantly. Some other kids whistled in agreement.

"WRONG!" bellowed Coach. "I am Santa! And you are my elves! This is your busiest season, and I want to see you running your little legs off from now until January! No pigging out on cookies or candy canes or imbibing on eggnog, you hear? I don't want anyone coming back here after winter break with a jolly belly!"

Inspired, bizarrely enough, by Asanuma, Darien continued his oblivious act by nudging Serena with his shoulder and saying, "There go all your Christmas plans, Odango."

He felt the look that she shot him, but suddenly her body was relaxing. He continued to face ahead, as though focused on the argument now going on between Coach and Tonami, but his senses were trained inevitably on her.

But he still almost jumped when her cold fingers touched the back of his hand.

"Darien…" Her words were breathed, not spoken. He wanted so badly to turn his hand over and catch her cold fingers. "Thank you."

It was like her cold fingers had pressed to his heart instead of his hand. His breath was frozen inside his lungs.

_I love you. I was full of bullshit before when I said I didn't. Please let me love you._

Darien pulled his hand from beneath her fingers. He placed it in his jacket pocket and put on a smile that felt like dried rubber cement.

"You're welcome."

L

"It's such a drag having the arcade closed," grumbled Buji, scuffing his feet down the concrete as he walked beside Serena. "I wish Toki-nii-chan's parents would hurry up and fix it already!"

"You're so rude," said Rini on Serena's other side. "Maybe they have more important things to worry about than making sure annoying little boys can rot their tiny brains with video games."

"Whatever, _kindergartner_," shot Buji back. "I saw you getting all excited that time Motoki was teaching you how to play Star Rangers."

Rini rolled her eyes. "Of course you wouldn't understand the concept of being polite."

Buji stuck out his tongue. "Like you're so polite, Grumpy."

"I am too polite!" Rini grabbed Serena's hand, yanking on it to demand Serena's attention. "Right, Serena?"

Serena resisted the very, very, very hard-to-resist urge to giggle at Rini's behavior and pasted on a stern look instead. "Neither of you are being very polite right now. Maybe I won't take you to get hot chocolate."

"NEE-CHAN!" Now Buji was grabbing her other hand with his mittened one. "PLEASE? We'll be good, I PROMISE!"

"Speak for yourself." Rini sniffed. "I'm not that pathetic."

"You will be when I have hot chocolate and you're still cold," taunted Buji, then turned his attention back to pulling Serena down the sidewalk. "C'mon, nee-chan, c'mon, we'll be really really REALLY good, or at least I will because I love you to the moon and back and I don't want to embarrass you, unlike _some _people – "

Rini's face was a tomato by now. She stalked after them angrily in her snow boots, and this time Serena couldn't help the laughter that escaped her. She was glad that Mayuko had had another doctor's appointment today. Watching the way that Rini acted in front of Buji was enough to chase almost all her guilt about Darien from the front of her mind.

Suddenly Buji stopped. She nearly fell over him, catching him by the shoulders and righting them both before they could go sprawling on the slippery sidewalk.

"What is it, Buji?" Serena asked, letting go of one of his shoulders to reach out and grab Rini lest she too slip on the pavement.

Rini huffed, folding her arms and looking away as Serena kept ahold of her hood. "I'm not a baby like Buji, Serena."

"Nee-chan…" Buji lifted a hand and pointed. "Isn't that your friend?"

Serena followed his finger to the newsstand a few meters away. Tacked across its front was a dozen copies of the same newspaper, that day's Tokyo Tribune. There were two people on the cover, a black-haired man and a thin, black-haired girl.

The headline proclaimed, _SENATOR'S LOST DAUGHTER RETURNS HOME._


	23. Chapter 23

A/N: As always, another long author's note. I wish I could reply individually to all you guys. And update faster.

First, I feel I owe everyone an apology. I have looked through old chapters and been mortified by them, not only by the amount of angst but by the careless grammatical and plotical errors. (And the infamous Princeton-Yale mix-up, heheh.) Thanks to Jade's and my new schedules, we're actually kind of editing the chapters now, which was impossible before because I just handed them to her on a disk, like a covert drug handoff. So hopefully the mistakes will decrease. (Except maybe in this chapter, which was a masochistic rush job.) As for the often-confusing plot, I can only apologize for being an amateur writer. I promise I'm working on that – and the angst. I realized how much it actually detracts from the plot. There is one last huge gush of it this chapter, but then it should taper off, and if it doesn't then you have the right to yell at me.

Second: you are all amazing. The responses for STC22 and L&L bowled me over. You guys had my chest tight, especially when I realized how many people are still around from Season 1. I told Jade that when I started typing this chapter, I could still remember typing Chapter 23 of Season 1. It was the first chapter I wrote on my new laptop – over _two years_ ago. To realize that so much time has passed but so many of the same people are still here reading is surreal to me. I can't tell you how much all of you, new and old readers alike, have impacted my life. I'm pretty sure I look forward to your reviews more than you look forward to the updates. Please accept my most sincere thanks for sticking through late updates and account changes and incredible amounts of frustrating angst, and thank you for brightening my world.

And speaking of people who brighten the world – Jade-Eye. Simply put, you're the best. BANZAI!

Last, please remember my Sailor Moon wears a mask.

Disclaimer: That said, she is not MY Sailor Moon. I don't own Sailor Moon. Or anything but Buji and Mikai.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Twenty Three: What They Wanted

L

"Nope." Asanuma tossed the newspaper back onto Darien's coffee table. "It's not her."

"Are you sure?" Lita leaned over to inspect the picture herself for the third time. "Sure as hell looks like her to me."

"I'm sure." Asanuma nodded his head sharply, arms crossed as he leaned against the arm of the sofa beside Rini. "Rei's boobs aren't that big."

The orange Gatorade that Darien had been drinking (after Serena snatched the mug of coffee out of his hand and demanded, "Do you really want to see Dr. Tomoe again?") sprayed out of his mouth to soak the newspaper on the coffee table.

"How can you say that with a straight face?" Lita demanded.

But Asanuma wasn't paying attention to her. He picked up the now-dripping newspaper and jabbed at the picture on the front cover. "Look. This girl has some sort of scar or something on the front of her chest. See it?"

"What's with your obsession with her chest?" Lita muttered, but she leaned forward with Serena, squinting at the V of pale – now orange – skin revealed by the girl's rather low-cut shirt. She couldn't see any scar, maybe a shadow… It was barely possible to see any distinguishing feature on the girl at all: Senator Hino had his arm around her, pressing her head against his chest, and her hair more than half-concealed her face. With the ink running with Gatorade, the image's clarity was even worse.

Lita sat back. "I don't see it." She frowned. "When would you ever have gotten close enough to see that far down Rei's shirt anyway?"

Serena wondered this, too, shooting a somewhat disappointed look at Asanuma. _Darien _would never do such a thing…would he? She glanced at him suspiciously.

"We were both at a formal get-together once," said Asanuma impatiently. "The dress her dad picked out didn't leave much to the imagination. How come when I say its Rei no one believes me, but when I say it isn't Rei STILL no one believes me?"

"I believe you."

They all looked over at Darien.

Asanuma, rather than seeming triumphant at Darien's agreement, seemed suspicious. "Why?"

"Why would Rei go back to her father?" Darien mopped the spat-out Gatorade from his corner of the table with his sleeve. His voice was flat. "She hates him, right?"

Serena made a sound and went to the kitchen, returning with two dishtowels. She handed one to Darien and used the other herself, kneeling on the carpet next to the table.

"There's not a lot of stuff she doesn't hate," pointed out Lita, casting a glance at Asanuma. "I imagine she hates being homeless and starving in the streets too. Sometimes it comes down to what you hate less."

Asanuma was shaking his head. "No. You don't know her. Rei wouldn't go back to her dad."

"Like you know her that well," Lita countered, leaning back in the sofa. "You talked to her, what, three times total? Serena's the only one who actually knew her. D'you think it's her, Serena?"

"Um…" Serena rocked back on her heels, her hand falling still on the coffee table. Lita's eyes were expectant, Asanuma's accusing. Serena didn't blame him. Asanuma, if no one else had, had noticed her behavior in the cafeteria earlier today.

"I…I don't _think _Rei would go to her dad..."

_Except that…people change. When they're desperate enough, they change. They do things that they would never do before._

_"I'd love for you to teach me, Lita-chan, but Haruka-kun already promised he would."_

"But," Serena finished, looking at her hands, "she might."

"No." Asanuma shook his head even before Serena had finished. "Rei would _never _go back to him. I can't BELIEVE you guys have this little faith in her – "

"Asanuma, calm down – "

Suddenly Rini cleared her throat.

Everyone fell quiet and looked at her.

Rini returned their gazes stolidly. "I was just clearing my throat."

Serena looked at Asanuma. He was still looking at Rini. His brows were unknit, his expression suddenly abashed.

After no one spoke for a minute, Darien sat forward.

"Whether it's Rei or not, two courses of action are available to us. One: Go to Tokyo, find Senator Hino, and try to find the girl from the picture and see if it's Rei. Two: Do nothing. But…."

He paused and turned his face in Asanuma's direction as thought expecting protest. But Asanuma was still quiet.

"But, what would be accomplished by bringing Rei back here if it is her? If she is in Tokyo, she's there by choice. Senator or not, it seems unlikely that her father could keep a Senshi if she didn't want to be there. If that's true, then she doesn't want to be here."

Darien paused again, pressing a hand to his forehead. "Furthermore, it's not as though we're desperate for extra power to deal with the youma. We don't need her here."

He left out, deliberately, the fact that having Rei around would mean one more threat toward Serena, on which he wasn't keen.

Serena, unaware of his omission, thought, _You're wrong, Darien. Asanuma needs her._

A sigh escaped Asanuma. Serena looked over to see him tense-jawed. "Either way, it doesn't matter because that girl in the picture isn't her."

"_Supposing_ it's not Rei," said Lita. "Why's someone posing as her? Did her dad offer some sort of reward and someone's pulling a Dimitri?"

"Who's Dimitri?" asked Darien and Rini at the same time. Serena stuck a fist in her mouth as they both turned their faces away from the other.

"Who's Dimitri?" Lita echoed. "Asanuma never let you watch _Anastasia_?" She aimed a kick at the blond. "What kind of caregiver are you?"

"Not _me_! Future me!" protested Asanuma, scrambling backward out of the reach of Lita's long legs – and consequently falling over the back of the loveseat. A loud thump was heard.

Then Asanuma's head popped up above the back of the couch, blond curls tousled. "_Anyway_." He shot a dirty look at Lita and propped his arms on the cushion. "More likely Hino orchestrated it himself. Elections are soon; he doesn't wanna look like the doofus who couldn't even keep track of one daughter. It's not good for his family-man image."

This, Serena realized, made a lot of sense. And it fit with what she knew of Rei's dad – which, she realized now, listening to Asanuma, was very little. Lita had said that Serena was the only one who knew Rei but it seemed, listening now, that Asanuma knew her much better. Would she, Serena ever have someone who knew her that well?

L

He hated this. Damn, he hated this, hated it so much –

A shadow jumped on the rooftop beside him, and he jumped.

"Motoki."

"Asanuma!" Motoki's heart started beating again. He squatted on the gravel and pressed his palm over his heart. "Goddamnit! Don't sneak up on a guy like that!"

"Goddamnit?" Asanuma echoed. His metal-toed boots, the same as the ones that Motoki was wearing, transformed in order to patrol, came into Motoki's line of division. "What's up with you, man?"

Motoki exhaled a long cloud of warm breath into the cold night and stood up. "Nothing." He eyed Asanuma's armor. "Did Darien send you to patrol too?"

"Nope," said Asanuma. "Just came. My head feels clearer up here."

"Oh?" said Motoki politely, but it came out more of a grunted sort of exhalation, because now he was at the edge of the roof and there was a huge gap yawning between him and the next building. He hated this, he hated this –

"Toki!" Asanuma's voice rang out in the stillness; Motoki looked up to see his blond friend already standing on the other roof.

"What are you waiting for, man? C'mon!"

"_Easier said than done"_, thought Motoki. He took another breath and, squeezing his eyes shut, jumped.

He landed on his hands and knees, which was an improvement over last time's landing on his hands and head. His palms and knees glowed faintly as they healed. He was glad that he didn't seem to need Darien's intervention to heal anymore. He would be a bloody mess, literally.

"Ouch, did you trip?" Asanuma hauled him up by the elbow. "Lita told you about the picture, right?"

"Yeah, she called me," said Motoki carefully. Was that a scream he heard? "Wait." He leaned over the roof's edge, the railing digging into his gut as he squinted into the dark street.

"Nothing's there," Asanuma said from behind him. "Youma make this weird kind of glow. You can always tell."

There!

Motoki scrambled over the railing, then dropped. Air rushed into his eyes, which were this time too terrified to shut; then he landed on the ground. Adrenaline shoved the shock of the impact from his awareness, and he lurched into a sprint down the street, into the side alley. Barely visible was the man he had spotted, with a weapon of some kind held to a woman's throat.

"Hey!" Motoki was too breathless to shout very loudly, but he rammed into the man with all his force. They went crashing into the Dumpster with a huge clang, then the pile of trash bags beside it with a deafening racket of glass and plastic.

"Get off – bastard – "

It was too dark to see. But Motoki heard the whine of a blade scraping against his metal armguards, felt the furious sting of his skin parting beneath its serrated edge.

"Ha!"

But the man's victory was short-lived; the blade only cut a few centimeters down Motoki's neck before it encountered the heavy mail shirt beneath his tunic. Motoki, who had frozen when the blade touched his throat, regained himself. He summoned a clumsy crackling of electricity to shock the man's grip from his blade, then scrambled to his feet. There was some light now, orange and dim; he heard Asanuma pounding down the sidewalk behind him, and he stepped back, relief gushing through him like blood. Asanuma would take care of it, Asanuma would take the man out, Motoki wouldn't have to do it –

Asanuma leapt onto the Dumpster and bulleted down from it with his fist cocked to punch. A painful-sounding thud later the man was sprawled unconscious in the pile of trash bags, blood streaming from his nose.

He turned around, one hand still holding a ball of fire for light, and looked at Motoki.

Motoki smiled weakly as he stumbled over to the man's victim, a woman lying unconscious near the mouth of the alley. She appeared to have fainted from fright, the poor thing. She had brown hair like Lita.

He shuddered. "Thanks."

"No, thank YOU," said Asanuma. "I didn't mean to steal your kill, but I'm so wound up tonight…" He flexed his fist. "Felt good to get that out."

"Yeah. Felt good," Motoki echoed. Awkwardly he gathered the woman up into his arms.

"Here, we'll find a pay phone and call 911." Asanuma walked past Motoki out onto the street. "Hopefully she didn't see our faces. You think she saw 'em? We need to get masks. But not nancy ones like Darien's, we need tough ones. Maybe like ninja. Or those things the Arabian guys wear, what are those called?"

While they perched on the rooftop ten minutes later, watching an EMT place the woman on a gurney and policemen surround the man in the alley, Asanuma said, "Good job, though, dude. I wouldn't have seen that happening, I only look for youma."

Motoki rubbed his eyes and wished that youma were the only things that could hurt people.

L

Mercury watched from inside the fog as Pluto spoke to the mirror in which Uranus and Neptune stood. Pluto had not yet said anything to her, which meant either that she was too angry to have noticed her presence or was satisfied to let her watch as she chastised the two Outer Senshi. Probably the former.

"You haven't made any progress," Pluto told them icily.

"Sorry, WE don't have any magic mirrors to look into and ask where Sailor Saturn is." Only Uranus had the nerve to talk to Pluto with such outright sarcasm. Or perhaps it was not nerve so much as a lack of tactical sense. "You took Rei, which means we have no leads to find Saturn, and you gave us an extra assignment to keep Sailor Moon and the prince apart. Do you want us to start giving you foot massages while we're at it?"

Definitely a lack of tactical sense.

"If you'd been successful at so much as one of your assignments, I wouldn't be reproaching you," returned Pluto. "But you have failed miserably at all of them."

Her staff twirled, and a mirror appeared where Haruka and Michiru would be able to see it. Within it coalesced an image of Serena Tsukino and Darien Shields an inch away from embracing in the darkness.

Mercury compressed her lips. Something had to be done about Endymion. If he kept emerging, both the royals' flash-forms would be dominant before the month was up.

"Endymion is even closer to Sailor Moon than before!" Pluto snapped.

"What is so wrong with that?" Michiru's voice was quiet. "The more absorbed he is by her, the less likely he is to search for the princess."

Pluto glared at Michiru for a long moment. Mercury watched, interested to see how she explained this one away.

At last she ground out, "And when the princess arrives and needs his protection but he still clings to Sailor Moon, what do you propose we do then, Neptune?"

"We kill her," said Haruka.

Mercury watched Pluto's scarlet eyes slide to Haruka. The Time Senshi lifted her staff and slid it through the mirror slowly, until its heavy end hovered beside the woman's temple. She spoke, her voice cold as death.

"If you so much as contemplate killing her, your flash form will be out before you can so much as breathe."

She lowered her staff back down to the ground. "Sailor Moon is mine."

Haruka grimaced, looking away. "Fine. Whatever."

"Not whatever!" Above the black bags that circled them, her red eyes flashed. "You are both meandering through your duties as if we have all the time in the world!"

"Pluto," soothed Michiru, her hands on Haruka's shoulders. "We know – "

"You don't! Every minute that passes, the High Senshi and Chaos both come closer to our system! Every minute the princess comes closer to awakening! If Saturn is not found before she emerges, the High Senshi will take her to fight Chaos, and she will die with no way to return!"

"Pluto, she'll be reincarnated – "

"She won't!" Pluto spun. "Without Saturn's intervention, she will go to hell when she dies. And there is no reincarnation from hell."

Mercury frowned once more. Pluto was revealing too much in her anger. She bent her fingers in front of her lips. A bubble formed in front of them, and into it, she whispered, "Pluto, I must speak with you."

She released the bubble, and it floated swiftly to Pluto's ear, where it popped.

Pluto spun, eyes still flashing.

Mercury extended a gloved hand through the fog, waved.

Pluto turned back to the Outer Senshi's mirror. "By the next time we speak, I sincerely hope that you will have Saturn with you."

She swung her staff into the mirror, splintering its glass, and it crumbled, the Outer Senshi disappearing from inside it. Then she turned toward Mercury.

The Ice Senshi melted out of the fog.

"How conveniently you forgot to mention that Saturn's awakening will destroy this planet," she said, then grimaced internally. Haruka's idiocy was contagious.

"Mercury, you are treading thin ice." Pluto's enunciation was cold and sharp and not at all puny.

Mercury silenced herself, smiling internally. The fact that Pluto was unaware she had just used a pun made it all the more amusing.

The dark-haired Senshi turned. "Has the child been fighting? I will reinforce the seal – "

"Ami? Fighting?" Mercury let herself laugh. "You cannot possibly have placed those words in the same sentence. She is as dormant as Saturn."

"State your purpose for disturbing me, Mercury."

Mercury withdrew her computer from her SubSpace pocket. "A concern has presented itself to me. The Black Moon traveled through the time plane in order to reach this present from the future. I'm assuming it was without your help – "

She paused and lifted her brows at Pluto, who did not dignify her implied question with an answer.

Mercury shrugged and continued. " – which begs the question of how _they_ were able to enter the plane. Rini's ability to do so is comprehensible, but the Black Moon's is still unexplained. Aside from yourself and her, there are only three sources of power which could have allowed them passage through the plane."

"Endymion," said Pluto slowly, "or the High Senshi."

"Yes." Mercury nodded. "Or the princess, of course."

"Impossible." Pluto tapped her staff on the floor. "She would not send assassins into the past after her own daughter." The throb in Pluto's voice clearly conveyed her regret that this was the case.

Mercury lifted a brow. "Would Endymion?"

Pluto extended her staff into the mist. A mirror materialized around it, and a black-haired man with glowing golden eyes within it.

"Under Chaos's influence he would," she said shortly.

"Endymion – under _Chaos_?" Mercury feigned surprise, as though she had not already seen this possibility in the mirror – now _mirrors_ – that she had pilfered from Pluto.

"Yes." Pluto's voice was grim. "Almost inevitably. The few time paths in which he does not are fading."

"But – why?"

"He's a Terran," spat Pluto. "Does he need a reason?"

Mercury cleared her throat. "Regardless, My Lady, we cannot rule out the High Senshi. Lanai had a Time Key, and they would stop at nothing to eliminate the child's existence. After all, it was they who were desperate enough to unleash Metallia onto the Silver Millennium – "

"Yes, Mercury, I am aware of that fact." Pluto's voice was biting again. "I have had a thousand years to dwell on their betrayal." She straightened, banishing the mirror from around her staff. "But I think that they have learned their lesson from about attempting to interfere with fate."

Mercury said nothing.

"The whole problem would be eliminated by killing the child here and now." Pluto ignored Mercury. "Without her around, Serenity and Endymion could be contained until Saturn is found."

Mercury slipped her computer back into her pocket. "Then why not kill her?"

Pluto looked at her askance. "No matter how blasphemous her existence, to murder a member of Selene's blood would not sit well with me."

"The end result is the same regardless," said Mercury with a shrug. "Whether by our hands or the High Senshi's. Or even the Black Moon's."

"About the Black Moon." Pluto frowned. "Take this." She extended her staff into the fog and withdrew a hand-sized mirror.

Mercury closed her hands around it, brows aloft.

"It will show you the events leading to Endymion's entrance to and exit from the time plane," said Pluto. "Study it and determine for me how he was able to leave it under his own power."

Mercury placed the mirror into her subspace pocket, concealing her annoyance with yet receiving another pointless job from Pluto. "I do not believe that it is Endymion who helped them, My Lady."

"And I do not believe it is your place to question my orders, Sailor Mercury." Pluto turned back to her mirrors, a clear dismissal.

Mercury pursed her lips and vanished.

L

"Two hot chocolates." Haruka traded the concession employee money for two steaming styrofoam cups and turned around, handing one to Serena. "Here you go, Beautiful."

Serena smiled and held the cup beneath her face. "Thank you." She wasn't sure which she was thanking him for, the chocolate or the compliment.

Wistfully, she eyed the container of mini-marshmallows behind the counter, but Haruka was already leading her toward the set of tables that rimmed the outside of the ice rink.

"Cold, huh?" he said as he sat down. "You look really cute all bundled up like an Eskimo."

Serena smiled again, sitting across from him. "Thank you."

When the silence began to dig into her like an uncomfortable piece of mulch in her shoe, she added, "And thanks for teaching me how to ice skate. I'm sorry Lita and Toki couldn't come – "

"That's fine." He smiled at her.

She felt his shoes sneaking under hers, pushing her feet up onto his. Her face turned terribly hot under her scarf. She kept her feet very still.

"I think I like it better with just us anyway," he said.

"Um – Haruka-san!"

They were both surprised by Serena's sudden outburst; Serena's head whipped up, and Haruka blinked at her.

"I – um – I – " Serena gripped her mug more tightly. "How do I feel about my dad?"

Haruka was eyeing her as though he had just decided that she was from another planet, and she blushed more brightly beneath her scarf.

"Well – are you trying to decide that?" asked Haruka slowly.

"No – I just – " _'I just wanted to see if you knew how I felt about my dad? Like Asanuma knows how Rei feels about hers?' You can't say that, Serena!_

"It seemed to me like you love your father very much," Haruka said now, even more slowly than before. His blueberry eyes seemed to be measuring her. "And he seems to love you very much as well. Hmm. Are you sure you don't have him brainwashed?"  
His voice was teasing, as it so often was, but the way that his blueberry eyes were watching her from under his eyelashes reminded her of Asanuma when he wanted to find something out…

"I'm joking. It's nice to see that a father and daughter can be so close." Haruka leaned forward and tucked a curl behind Serena's ear. She turned pink again. "These days it's easy to start thinking that all families are as dysfunctional as the Hinos."

"The… oh. You read that article."

For a second, Serena had wondered how Haruka could possibly know about Rei. Now she remembered that all Japan knew – or thought they knew, rather – that Senator Hino's daughter was recovered and safe.

"Why do you think he doesn't love her?" she asked.

Haruka smiled slowly at her before answering. "Just a hunch. He doesn't exude a very paternal aura. Are you finished with your hot cocoa?"

"Oh!" Serena looked down at the remaining, marshmallow-less brown liquid. "Yes."

Haruka kept a hold of her hand as they stepped back onto the ice, him with ease and Serena with a little wobble. The hour that they had spent skating before stopping for hot chocolate hadn't done much for her skating skills. Haruka kept at least one hand around her waist, usually two, and his skates kept getting in the way of hers when she tried to finally glide on her own. His proximity and her increased clumsiness in his proximity made her very pink-faced and he seemed to think this very cute. Which was kind, and which she appreciated, considering that she didn't think the mixture of pink skin and silver scars was all that appealing – hence the scarf covering the bottom half of her face – but she found herself wishing that he had a rope connection with her so that he would sense how frustrated she was becoming and let her go.

"Are you sure you're not just pretending to be clumsy so I'll keep catching you, Muffinhead?" he teased her when again she slipped. "I know you can be as graceful as a Senshi when you try."

Serena smiled superficially, trying to calm her heart, which had begun to speed when he said 'Senshi.' But of course he would never conceive the thought of her being a Senshi; she'd only known him for a month. Darien had known her for a year without realizing that she was a Senshi.

"Nee-chan! Nee-chan!"

At the familiar voice, Serena spun. And lost her balance again. She landed on her bottom on the ice, but the impact burst a grin onto her face because at the same time she saw Buji wobbling toward her on ice skates.

"Buji-kun!"

And behind him, gliding far more gracefully, was a pint-sized skater in a white-trimmed pink hood.

"Rini?"

Haruka caught Serena beneath the ribs and hauled her up. "What do you know, it's the pre-K newlyweds," he murmured in her ear.

Buji took another faltering lurch forward and crashed down on the ice. Serena, with shuffling strokes of her skates, managed to make it over to him.

"C'mon, Buji," she grunted, bending over to pull him up – but she ended up toppling over instead. "Ow!"

"Serena? Are you alright?"

Huh? But that was – Serena looked up and saw not only her mother, but Mayuko-san skating toward her with Rini.

"_Mom_?" she said incredulously.

"Hello, dear," Ikuko said, reaching her. She pulled her up and began brushing the shaved ice from Serena's jacket as Mayuko did the same to Buji with Rini smirking in the background. "You didn't tell me you were coming to the skating rink. Hello again, Haruka-san. You've been monopolizing my Serena quite a bit lately."

"I can't help it, Tsukino-san." Haruka smiled. "She's such pleasant company."

"And you're such a charmer." Ikuko finished brushing a rather dumbfounded Serena off and turned to Mayuko. "May-chan, this is Haruka Tennou."

"Oh?" Mayuko turned her eyes from Serena to Haruka and smiled, a questioning crease made by her brows.

"I'm Serena's boyfriend." Haruka grasped Mayuko's hand but looked at Serena, who was blushing again. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Yes, a pleasure." Mayuko smiled and let go of his hand.

"Mayuko-san, should you be on the ice?" asked Serena, looking at the dark-haired woman's rounded abdomen with worry.

"Oh, I can skate well enough to keep myself upright." Mayuko laughed. "And I wanted to teach the children how to skate for the Christmas festival. But Rini seems to be quite the gold medalist already!"

Buji groaned as he hung onto his mother's arm to stay upright. "Don't make her head _bigger_, 'kaa-chan!"

Ikuko leaned over to Serena. "Do they not get along? They're both in the same class, so I thought this would be a nice surprise play date for Rini."

Serena hid a grin behind her mittened hand as beside her Rini muttered, "Oh, it was a _surprise_, alright," and skated off toward the other end of the rink.

"I like to think that they agree to disagree," Serena told her mother.

"Oh, look at her go," said Mayuko happily, turning to watch Rini weaving between the other skaters, gliding like a small pink swan. "She's just beautiful. And so self-possessed, Ikuko-chan!" She patted Buji's head. "No wonder Buji talks about her so much."

"_Mo-om_! I DON'T." Buji crossed his arms, or as much as he could with one arm, since the other was hanging onto his mother to stay upright. "It's not true, nee-chan."

Mayuko giggled, and Ikuko began to giggle, too.

Serena gave Buji a sympathetic look. Giving her a mournful look, he let go of his grip on his mother's arm and began to wobble toward Serena instead. Like a baby taking its first steps he crossed the gap between them, lurching at the end to grab a handful of her jacket to keep upright.

"Whoah, kid!" exclaimed Haruka. "Serena can barely stay upright herself without you hanging onto her!"

"No, Haruka-kun, it's okay." Serena waved him off, aware that she should feel touched by his protectiveness. "How about we try skating on our own, Honey Bunny? Here, we'll hold onto the wall. Ready?"

Buji's hand was very tight around hers as he shuffled his way to the wall, frowning in concentration. "Can we catch up to Rini?"

Serena looked up and scanned the rink until she found that little flying pink figure. She was so far away.

But as Serena watched her, Rini turned her head. She looked around until at last her gaze stopped on them.

Serena gave her a little wave.

Rini coasted to a stop…

Hesitated.

Then she began to skate toward them.

Serena felt a smile on her face. "We don't have to, Buji. See? Rini's coming to us."

L

"I don't know who's going to have more bruises, Serena or Buji," fussed Mayuko a few hours later as they walked home. "You two are so stubborn."

"Ha! But I beat Rini in the race at the end!" Buji stuck his tongue out at Rini.

"Speed isn't everything," she said loftily. "Besides, I finished the race on my _feet_. Can you say the same?"

Buji could not, for he had ended the race on his face, but if his nose was perhaps a little more bent than it had been that morning, he didn't mind. He stuck his hands behind his head. "Go ahead, be a sore loser."

"Buji," Mayuko scolded. "I think somebody's being a poor winner."

"Hmph." Buji ran ahead, then he turned and stopped right in front of Rini, his arm jutting out with his hand for her to shake. "Good game."

Rini looked at his hand. Then she looked at his face. Then she looked at Serena.

Serena looked at her mother, and they both hid smiles.

Rini sighed. "Yeah, whatever." She shook Buji's hand without looking at him.

"Good!" Buji ran back to his mom's side. "Glue-eater!"

Rini's jaw dropped open. "Bird Nest Head!"

"Meatball Head!"

"Neanderthal!"

Ikuko sighed, placing a hand on her cheek. "I don't blame Haruka-san for leaving early."

L

Preparations for the Christmas Festival were in full swing when the intercom in Darien's homeroom crackled. "Could Darien Shields please come to Principal Waishatsu's office?"

Asanuma leaned forward. "Dude. What did you do?"

Darien got up. "Nothing."

Unless Miss Lanai had finally returned from her months-long trip and decided to tell the principal that Darien had threatened to kill her.

He contemplated the probability of this scenario and decided that if nothing else, being punished would be better than sitting in the classroom while everyone else worked on gingerbread and designed costumes and arranged budgets. The urge to act, to _do _something, had become so difficult to stifle that he found himself biting his tongue to keep from telling his classmates that he could just make it snow instead of them buying mounds of the fake stuff to put around Santa's workshop.

As he walked into the principal's office a few minutes later, a familiar scent greeted him when he walked into Principal Waishatsu's office. _Serena?_

"Darien! So, ah, glad you could make it!"

Darien sat down before Waishatsu could give him his customary awkward hug. But he was caught from behind by a slap on the back.

"Shields! Good to see you, boy!"

"Coach?" escaped from Darien. He turned toward where he felt Serena sitting. He felt the breath of air from her shrug.

"Ah, yes, and Miss Tsukino is here also, Mr. Shields," said Waishatsu, apparently not having noticed the brief interaction between the two.

"Why are we here?" asked Darien as the sound of Coach lowering himself into a chair reached his ears. "Is this about the track team contract?"

"Track team contract?" Coach's voice was loud. "What track team contract? I don't remember any contract! Be quiet and listen to the principal, Shields!"

Next to him, Darien felt Serena's smile curve the air. He felt it as though the air was his skin. He swallowed.

"Yes, yes, well," said the principal. "This about the, ah, Christmas festival. You've both participated in it before, so you know that all the students must participate in helping for credit. And I've heard from your teachers that this has been, ah, a little difficult for you, Mr. Shields."

With effort Darien kept his face bland. In his head, he recited a Fibonacci sequence backward. The technique had worked remarkably well the first three times he used it to keep his anger in check, but it had lost most of its effectiveness by now. He recited it backward in French instead, and that doused the fiery annoyance building inside him a little bit.

_…quatre-vingts-neuf…cinquante-cinq…trent-quatre…_

"Therefore, we have come up with a way that you can, ah, participate in the festival and get your full credit."

_...vingt-et-un…treize…_ Darien felt Waishatsu lean forward. _Huit…_

"_You_ will be Santa Claus!"

_…?_

Darien cleared his throat. Funny, why he had heard Principal Waishatsu saying things that were better suited to come out of Asanuma's mouth?

"Beg pardon?" he said to the principal.

"Santa Claus!" Serena echoed, gasping with laughter, saving Waishatsu from having to repeat himself. She was crying with mirth; he tasted the faint salt evaporating into the air from her tears. "You…_Santa!_" And she dissolved into more peals of laughter.

"And you, Miss Tsukino," Waishatsu continued over her laughter. His voice was eager, excited; he seemed encouraged by Serena's reaction. "You'll be Mrs. Claus!"

Serena stopped laughing.

L

"Oh, man. Oh, MAN!" Asanuma set down his backpack and cackled. "This is _rich_! Not as rich as I'm going to be after I sell the pictures of Darien in the Santa suit, but still very rich."

Darien glowered across the table. "Take pictures and die."

"Now, now, Santa, don't make death threats." Asanuma shook his finger at Darien. "It wouldn't look good if SANTA got coal in his stocking."

"Dam – ng!" modified Lita quickly at Serena's warning look. She shot a glance at Rini, who sat next to Serena with a book in her lap, then leaned back in her chair. "I really wanted to see Motoki in the Santa suit!"

"I already have pictures of that," said Asanuma dismissively. "For twenty bucks you can have 'em." He cackled again. "What I want is to know what in hell gave Waishatsu the idiotic idea to expose Darien to small children!"

"Probably the same thing that gave my future self the idiotic idea to let you raise his daughter," retorted Darien stormily.

Serena watched Darien's expression carefully, trying to understand what his phrasing had meant. Was he finally reconciling with the idea of Rini being his daughter, or was he still thinking of his future self as someone totally separate from him? She peeked down at Rini to see her reaction, but the little girl's brown-bunned head was still bent over the book that she held in her lap, but Serena felt where their arms were touching how tense she had suddenly gone.

"No, that was an AWESOME idea," proclaimed Asanuma, on Rini's other side. "Because, unlike some nerds, I know how to have fun!" He elbowed her. "Right, Rini?"

Rini turned the page in her book. "Right."

"Yeah, she really seems enthusiastic." Lita rolled her eyes.

Asanuma grabbed Rini suddenly and began tickling her sides. "Rini, how could you betray me like thiiiiiiis?"

The procession of looks on Rini's face was priceless: sheer shock, then murderous rage. Serena feared for Asanuma's life, or at the very least his manhood.

Then a look that she had never seen on Rini before began to creep across the little girl's face like a crack of light from a slowly opening door – and she began laughing. Full-blown, breathless giggles that popped and burst like bubbles.

"Asanuma – Asanuma – stop!" she commanded, and it was obvious from the contortions of her face that she was trying to glare at him, but that incredible expression kept breaking through her face again.

Serena turned her astonished eyes toward Darien just in time to see him turning his head away.

She bit her lip. She wasn't even one of Rini's parents, and she was feeling jealous of Asanuma for being able to pull out a side of Rini that Serena never had. How did Darien, who was Rini's father, feel? Surely he must feel at least a tinge of that jealousy like her…after all, he had just referred to Rini as his daughter for the first time…surely he had begun to feel fondness for her?

"Orange soda?" The waiter arrived at the table, holding a tray of drinks.

"Oh! That's me!" Asanuma dropped Rini and reached for his drink. "Thanks!"

Rini's laughter died away in hiccoughs, the glower falling back onto her face like a blind over a window. She turned its full force on Asanuma as her strawberry milkshake was set in front of her. "Do that again and die."

"If I'm not afraid of Darien do you think I'll be afraid of you, little missy?" Asanuma blew his straw wrapper at her. "I see right through both of you softies." He pointed his straw at Darien. "He's Mr. Marshmallow." He pointed at Rini. "And you're Mini-Marshmallow."

Then he pointed at Lita. "And her, she's Jumbo Marshmallow."

"Itto – "

"No, Lita, no, please don't kill me – EEEK!"

As the opposite side of the table shook, Darien caught the waiter's sleeve. "Excuse me. Do you have any marshmallows?"

"Y-yes, sir, actually we do," the teenage boy stammered, catching sight of Darien's eyes for the first time.

"Could you please bring us some?"

"Yes right away, sir." He scurried off.

"Marshmallows?" asked Serena curiously, following Darien's lead and ignoring the kicking-under-the-table-fight ensuing between Asanuma and Lita. Rini would stop them if it got too bloody. Maybe. "What for?"

"You ordered hot chocolate, didn't you?" He sounded confused and almost forbidding, as though angry with her for asking. "I thought you liked it with marshmallows."

"Oh." Serena looked down at the mug of hot chocolate cupped between her hands. Her insides felt rather warm inside her, as though she'd already taken a sip of the hot liquid. "Thanks."

"It's just marshmallows." His voice was still gruff. "Besides, I owe you for agreeing to do the Claus thing with me. I'm glad it's you."

Serena's hand clapped to her cheek and tried to shove away her involuntary smile before someone noticed it.

"I mean," clarified Darien as she wrestled with her face, "if any youma attack and we have to run off and transform, it would be risky if it was someone outside our group."

The smile wilted beneath her fingers. She dropped her hand. Of course. Stupid. "Yeah! Yeah, good thinking!" She saw the waiter approaching with a paper cup of mini-marshmallows. "Thank you!"

"Y-you're welcome," said the waiter, avoiding her eyes. And her face altogether.

Serena sighed. She couldn't wait for the arcade to open again. At least everyone there was used to her scars.

"Where DID Toki go?" she wondered aloud, determinedly not thinking about the real reason Darien wanted her to be his wife. Or fake wife, rather.

She sighed again.

"He had something to do at home, he said," Asanuma said, joining the conversation. He sounded a little pained. "Damn, Lita, d'you think you could clip your toenails more often than every other century? That _hurt_."

"Language!" squawked Serena, reaching for Rini's ears.

Rini ducked Serena's hands without looking up from her book. "Whoever makes Serena reach for my ears again is going to die. I'm serious."

"_Dead _serious?" quipped Asanuma. Eyes sparkling mischievously, he took a deep breath – "Motherf&#*$, %&$# – "

Rini jabbed her elbow down.

Asanuma squeaked. And slid bonelessly down the booth, onto the floor.

"He better not have just fainted," Darien said, stirring sugar into the mug of coffee he had gotten from the waiter when Serena wasn't looking, "because I'm not carrying him home."

"The rule is that whoever inflicted the damage carries him home," declared Lita, who was the one who was usually on the short end of this rule.

They looked at Rini.

"_I _can't carry him home," she said, still not looking up from her book. "I'm too small."

"Rules are rules," said Darien.

Serena patted Rini's shoulder. "Don't worry. It'll be easy for you to carry him if we use the Luna Pen to turn you into a Sumo wrestler."

Despite himself, Darien snorted into his drink.

L

"Hey." Mikai stuck out a hand. "I'm Mikai. You must be Rei Hino."

The breathtaking girl in the red Senshi fuku cast him a look so sizzling with distrust that he was reminded of Darien's curly-haired friend, who had looked at him so suspiciously the day they first met.

"Enough chit-chat!" Sailor Mercury clapped her hands together. He looked over at her, and she smirked like a cat. "That's one Terran line I've always wanted to say. Now square off."

"Why am I fighting her?" Mikai asked again as he obeyed, taking a few steps backward. Automatically he bent his knees and lifted his hands in the guard position he had learned in self-defense many years ago.

"You'll need experience fighting fire," was Sailor Mercury's brief answer. She smiled again. "At least, in one of the possible futures."

"Of which there are now at least twenty," muttered the Hino girl. She wasn't in any guard position, just standing with her thumbs hooked into the bow on the back of her fuku. "I'm not going to teach him how to fight Asanuma."

Asanuma, huh?

"Rei. Rei, _dear_." Sailor Mercury cupped the girl's face in her gloved hands. Steam billowed up between them, but neither of them flinched. "I didn't say it was Asanuma."

Rei grasped Sailor Mercury's wrists, causing more steam to hiss up, and shoved the gloved hands from her face. "Then it's me. And I'm not going to teach him how to kill _me_."

"Can't blame her for that," Mikai told Sailor Mercury, picking at the chainmail beneath his strange armored outfit and rocking back on his heels. He was interested, very interested, by Senator Hino's runaway daughter. So she had a crush on Darien's spazzy blonde friend with powers. Cute. They could have little fire-breathing dragonbabies together.

But if she liked _him_, why was she _here_?

"I thought that the point behind teaching him was to bring the group together." Mikai listened carefully as Rei spoke. "If we're all just going to kill each other, what's the point?"

"The point, darling Rei-chan, is that if this is a chess board, the Shittenou are pawns. And what queen has ever won the game without her pawns?"

"I love how you talk about me like I'm not here." Mikai turned over in his hand the soft stone that Mercury had told him not to lose. "Do my powers include invisibility?"

He heard the click as Sailor Mercury pivoted slowly on her boot heel. He watched her feet step slowly and deliberately toward him until they were only a few centimeters from his.

"I _inferred_ that you were one of the more intelligent Terrans. But you're baiting a Senshi. Clearly I was mistaken."

Mikai lifted his gaze from her feet to her eyes. He leaned closer until her icy breath touched his chin. "Clearly."

He could see it; behind her blue visor something flickered in her eyes. Something darker and more human than those sharp ice-chips currently inhabiting her eye sockets.

Mercury took a step back. He smiled and did the same, letting the distance between them be doubled.

She cleared her throat, turning her elfin face away from him, and looked at Rei. "Begin."

Mikai smiled as he lifted his hands to block the fiery attack. If Rei Hino was a thought-provoking Sunday crossword puzzle, he reflected, then Sailor Mercury was a Rubik's cube with six sides and twelve colors.

L

Serena shifted her shoulders again.

"_Must_ you keep twitching?" burst from Darien's lips.

"Sorry!" exclaimed Serena bashfully, looking over at him where he sat in a red sateen suit so big for him that he looked as though he was sitting in a red puddle. "I can't help it."

"Is the fabric that uncomfortable?" He plucked at his own costume, his nose wrinkled in distaste. It was their first fitting with the Home Ec Club for their Claus costumes, and Serena could tell from his expression that there was nowhere he wouldn't rather be.

"Nooo…" Serena sighed and looked at her own reflection in the mirror. Her own outfit was nowhere near as overlarge as Darien's, even though she had been told she would be stuffing a pillow or two inside her shirt to appear as matronly as Mrs. Claus. "I just keep thinking. It's weird that there haven't been any youma attacks lately."

Darien was silent.

Serena turned from her reflection to face him. "Aren't you worried? The last time youma stopped showing up, the Dark Kingdom attacked the prom."

"Of course I'm concerned." Darien unfastened the top button of his jacket, massaging his throat. "But there's not much we can do about it. The Black Moon's holed up in an alternate time or dimension where I can't sense them. So it's not as though we can go charging in to offset any offensive they might be planning."

"No, I guess not…" Serena trailed off, chewing her bottom lip.

"Look, relax," said Darien stiffly. "Whatever happens we'll deal with it. We always have."

What he didn't add was that whatever attack the Black Moon he launched, he doubted they would be as hard to fight as the urge to kiss Serena while she chewed on her bottom lip was.

"Hey, guys!"

Serena turned. "Hi, Kim-san! Are you here to adjust her costumes?"

As always, Serena's ability to switch moods drew Darien's notice. Her voice as she chatted to the Sewing Club member assigned to the Claus costumes was as light and airy as angel food cake. He tried to keep himself from feeling irritated.

"So tell me again how you two got landed with this job?" Kim said around a mouthful of pins as she helped Serena to stand on a chair.

Darien felt the glance that Serena shot at him. He decided to save her the trouble of feeling bad.

"I couldn't do many other jobs, obviously," he said, gesturing toward his eyes.

"And who better to be your Mrs. Claus than Serena-san?" Kim laughed. "We all heard Coach saying that. Okay, Serena-san, move left, please – no, your other left."

"Oh! Sorry!"

Darien heard Serena's nervous laugh. He wondered if it was because she had mistaken her left and right or because of what Kim had said. He told himself it didn't matter because Serena knew – thought she knew – that he didn't love her romantically, because she certainly didn't love him that way – his fists clenched, a nagging feeling of forgetting whispering at the back of his mind – and because even if those reasons weren't in the way, he still could not pursue such a relationship with her while Endymion was still so violently powerful inside him.

L

Darien sat up in his armchair as a knock sounded on the apartment door. Mayuko was dropping Buji off while she went to another doctor's appointment.

_"Another doctor visit?" Serena had said when he mentioned this fact to her. He could hear the worry in her voice. "She's had a lot of them. Is that normal?"_

_"You're the girl here, you should know better than us," said Asanuma, earning a glare from Serena. "Right, Lita?"_

_"Well, excuse me for never having had a kid before," retorted Serena before Lita could kill Asanuma. "I don't think she would have checkups this often unless something had worried the doctors."_

_"Except Mayuko might be a little overprotective of the baby," said Lita. "Remember when she wouldn't let Buji out of her sight after her husband died? Maybe she's doing sort of the same thing with the baby."_

_"Still…" Serena bit her lip. "Won't you check on her, Darien?" For Serena was convinced that the baby was a she._

_And Darien had acquiesced, but sensed nothing at all amiss with the child as far as his knowledge of fetuses extended. It had actually seemed quite strong and even – if he wasn't mistaken – kicked at the touch of the Golden Crystal's aura. In fact, suspicion had begun to grow in his mind again…_

Darien kicked these thoughts away like the baby had kicked away the Golden Crystal's aura and opened his apartment door.

"Dare! What's up?"

_Mikai?_

What emerged from Darien's mouth was, "You're not Mayuko."

"Mayuko? That's a girl, right?" Mikai slid past him into the apartment. "For shame, Darien, when did you start entertaining women at your apartment? Mikai-nii-sama does not approve."

"What are you doing here?" Darien had not forgotten his determination that Mikai not become a Shittenou, and his thoughts about Mayuko's baby had only reinforced it. "I'm busy."

"Yeah. I can tell." Mikai's voice was dry, and Darien was fairly sure that he was looking over at the TV, which was playing _The Year Without a Santa Claus_. Darien had muted it when he heard the knock. And now Mikai had made him miss the Snow Miser song.

Darien sighed, shifting on his foot and sticking his hands in his pockets. An uncomfortable feeling was spreading inside his limbs, as though his bones were vibrating inside him.

"Well," said Mikai, "Notice anything different about me?"

Darien lifted his eyebrows, moving his leg surreptitiously to see if the sensation went away. It didn't. "Did you dye your hair Yu-Gi-Oh yellow?"

"No, that was in July," said Mikai. "It's red now. You don't notice anything?"

"Mikai. I'm blind."

"Okay. Well, I just came to give you your present."

"Present?" said Darien blankly.

"Present," repeated Mikai slowly, as though to a child. He slid a package into Darien's hand.

"What's today?" said Darien.

"Uh - the twenty-first."

Darien said a very bad word.

"Darien-san?"

Darien spun. "Mayuko-san!" He really hoped she hadn't heard his invective. "Hello! Come in – "

"Oh, no, I'm late, I can't – I'm so sorry, am I interrupting something?"

Darien was certain he was not imagining the sudden consternation in her voice. He could imagine what was going through her mind, if Mikai looked anything like he had the last time that Darien had seen him, with eyebrow piercing, a lip ring, bright red hair gelled in spikes –

"COOL! Your hair looks just like Renji's!"

The dismay that wafted from Mayuko at Buji's exclamation nearly drew a snort of laughter from Darien.

"Here's a smart kid," said Mikai. "What's your name?"

"Buji," said Buji proudly.

"Um…"

"Don't worry, Mayuko-san, he's safe with me," said Darien, picking up his cane to guide himself toward Mayuko and the door. Or at least, to look as though he needed it to guide himself. "Go ahead."

"Well…okay…thank you so much, Darien-san." Mayuko hurried off in a crinkle of coats, and Darien absently tuned back in to Mikai and Buji's conversation as he pulled his coat from the hook in the front hall. If it was the twenty-first, he needed to go shopping…

"…know who you look like?" Mikai was saying.

"Who?" breathed Buji eagerly.

"Darien!" replied Mikai.

"Aw!" complained Buji. "Everyone says that!"

"Well, what's wrong with it?" said Mikai. "Darien's as cool as an anime hero, isn't he?"

Darien snorted as he buttoned his coat.

"Well – " Buji's voice was a whisper now, but Darien's ears picked it up easily. "Yeah, but you can't tell him I said that!"

"Okay," whispered Mikai back.

Darien finished buttoning his more slowly. His face felt strange, and he felt it with his fingers, puzzled, until he realized that the strange involuntary stretching of his lips was a smile.

He waited until he could finally push it off his face to go back to the living room, where he said, "Hey. Buji."

"What, Darien-baka?"

"We're going to the mall. C'mon."

"The mall?" Buji considered this for a moment. "I didn't bring any money."

"If you help me pick a present for Serena I'll buy you the new Naruto season box set."

"How about the Bleach one?"

Darien frowned. "Your mom doesn't like you watching Bleach."

"What she doesn't know can't hurt her," said Buji. "I can watch it here."

Darien pursed his lips.

"Or, you know, you could just buy Serena a gift card to the doughnut shop," said Buji airily. "Nothing says I love you like a gift card – "

Darien's face was as red as Santa's suit as Mikai burst into laughter. "Deal."

L

"Are you sure about this?" Darien studied the item in question.

"Darien-baka, you asked me along for a reason, right?" Buji gave a long-suffering sigh. "Trust me. She'll like it. With girls, jewelry is always the answer."

The little boy pressed his hands against the glass, wrinkling his nose. "But it'd be better if you could make it special. Something no one else would have. My mom says all gifts should be like that."

An idea occurred to Darien. Surely he would be able to do _that_…

They were only a few shops away from the jewelry store, and Darien was slipping the slender box into his SubSpace pocket, when Buji gasped.

"Hey – Darien-baka!"

Darien's muscles tensed for action beneath his jacket, put on guard by the shock in Buji's voice. His hand flew to his pocket, summoning a rose. "What is it?"

"I think I just saw Serena-onee-chan in the _bookstore_!"

Darien crumpled the rose in his pocket.

"Did you now?" he said neutrally. "Well, I imagine she's probably buying manga."

"That makes more sense…" Then indignation flared in Buji's voice. "Hey, if she had time to come buy manga, then she had time to watch me! Let's go!"

He grabbed Darien's free hand and began marching. Before he knew it, Darien found himself surrounded by the familiar ink- and paper-scent of the bookstore.

"You liked that series, right? This one's by the same author – "

"Yeah, but I'm not reading a book with a cover like _that_ – "

Darien stiffened. That second hushed voice was Rini's.

"A cover like what – oops. Never mind! Hahahaha!" And that was undoubtedly Serena. No one could laugh quite as sheepishly as she could.

"Hey! Onee-chan!" That was Buji's voice. Darien felt from the air disturbances that he had thrown out as accusatory finger.

A gasp. "Buji!" Then – "Darien!"

Then, a duet of voices – "_YOU_!"

"What are you doing with nee-chan _again_?" Buji's voice demanded. "Stop following her around!"

"You're the one following her around," retorted Rini. "Why else would you be in a bookstore? You can't even read."

Darien sensed Buji bubbling even without using his psychometry. He reached out a hand and took a firm hold of the boy's hood.

"Behave," he said, his voice brooking no argument.

That didn't mean Buji didn't try.

"Rini started it – "

"_He _provoked the argument!" insisted Rini.

"_She_ said I couldn't read!"

Darien felt approaching feet on the ground. He stiffened again.

"Excuse me, miss? Sir? I'm afraid I must ask you to leave."

Darien could feel the heat of Serena's blush as though it was on his own face.

"We're so sorry!" she exclaimed to the clerk. "We're leaving, please forgive us!"

Darien waited for Serena to herd Rini out, then followed with Buji in tow.

"Oh my God!" Serena whispered when they were outside in the general din of the mall again. "How embarrassing!"

"Like you've never been kicked out a store for being loud before," said Darien, a little amusement touching his tone. He could still remember as though it were yesterday Serena hiding behind a tree to spy on the Chinese Food Guy. He felt a twinge, then remembered that Chinese Food Guy wasn't interested in girls. His irritation settled back down, and Endymion with it.

"Well – no – I mean – never mind," said Serena in a hasty tone.

"What she means is that the employee thought she was an adolescent mother." Rini's voice was as blunt as usual.

Darien didn't hear Serena's gasp because he was choking on his own breath. "Where did you learn about that?"

"And why is it bad?" asked Buji curiously.

"NEVER MIND!" Darien found himself exclaiming in unison with Serena. He clapped his hands over Buji's ears the way Serena did Rini's – and realized that Buji's ears felt very strangely shaped.

"Oops, sorry – " Serena tried to tug her hands out from under his.

"You can get your hands off my ears any time now," said Buji, sounding unnervingly like Rini. Not for the first time, Darien wondered if putting those two in the same class had really been a wise choice.

He removed his hands reluctantly – not reluctantly from Buji's ears because that would be strange in many ways, but reluctantly from over Serena's hands. "My apologies."

"It was my fault," said Serena very quickly.

"Actually – " Darien turned his head toward where he sensed Rini standing. "It wasn't."

"You shouldn't be punished for telling the truth," said Rini's voice. "That's what Asanuma always told me, so take it out on him if you don't like it."

"Meatball head," said Buji. "Since when does anyone listen to what Asanuma says?"

"Since when were you part of this conversation?" retorted Rini. "Stupid."

"Rini!" That was Serena's voice. Darien was busy trying to sort out the emotions in her voice when suddenly she said his name as though it should mean something. "_Darien_…"

He looked up. "What?"

Serena cleared her throat. "What do you say?"

Darien thought, his mind racing. What did he say? Huh? "Uh – Buji's right, you shouldn't listen to Asanuma," he said severely.

He felt Serena's elbow in his rib. "She needs to say _sorry_," she muttered into his ear and drew back.

Darien's skin tingled where her breath had been. His fingers curled. "Why don't you just tell her?"

Serena let out a sigh, then her fingers closed in the fabric of his sleeve. She drew him a little to the side. "You're her father," she said in a low tone. "I'm just some random girl taking care of her. I can't scold her!"

"Well – yes, you can," said Darien, feeling bewildered. "I give you permission."

"It doesn't work like that!" Serena hissed. "She needs to respect you! Not me!"

"I don't know how to raise a kid, Odango!"

"Neither do I!"

"You – but you – " Darien faltered.

Internally he fumed. She was being ridiculous. Did she think that just because he was blind he hadn't noticed all the times she fussed with Rini's coat when it wasn't buttoned high enough or when she fixed Rini's hair when it had come down after a day at school or when she calmed Rini down after an argument with Buji or even the increasingly frequent occasions when Rini grabbed hold of her hand for no reason? One could not be as aware of someone as Darien was of Serena and not notice these things. Could not _not _notice that Serena acted exactly like Darien would have liked his mother to act if he had had one.

"You're perfect with her," he said at last.

"And you're perfect with Buji," Serena retorted. "Rini's just like him. Not as loud, maybe. And maybe she doesn't always show how she feels – but if you could just see her the way you see him! And not like…not like she's…"

Now it was her turn to falter.

"Darien-baka," came Buji's voice from where they had left the two grade-schoolers a few meters away. "Are we going to be here all day? I want to get my Bleach episodes."

"Bleach?" echoed Serena. "Your mom doesn't like you watching Bleach." Darien felt her reproachful stare landing on him. "Darien…"

Darien lifted a brow, hiding the fresh batch of conflict that Serena had just pushed into him like a pan of cookies into an oven to bake. "I'm sorry, am I talking to the girl who let Rini read an inappropriate manga?"

"THAT WAS AN ACCIDENT!" Serena wailed.

Buji laughed out loud, and Darien heard even Rini snicker. He smiled himself, as only Serena could make him do, but inside he was thinking…thinking…

L

"Motoki." Darien darted out of his statistics class early that day to corner his friend as he emerged from his engineering class. He grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him toward the courtyard, impatiently stabbing things with his cane to keep up the blind façade.

"Dare?" Motoki's yawn sounded as though he'd just woken up from a stupor.

Darien stopped beneath their lunch tree and spun around. "I need some advice."

"Yeah?" Motoki rubbed his jaw, and it made a scratchy sound. In a far-off portion of his mind Darien deigned to wonder how long it had been since Motoki had shaved. "What's up?"

Darien paced in the grass, unconsciously avoiding the tree's protruding roots. "Should I make Rini come live with me?"

He made his ears into those of a bat beneath his hair so that he could Motoki's reaction, heard his eyelids click shut, then unstick again, as he blinked.

"Uh," said Motoki's voice. "That depends. What's your reason?"

Darien stopped pacing, nonplussed. Then he began again. "Well, it's obvious, isn't it? She's my daughter. Not Serena's. It's not fair to make Serena deal with her – "

"No."

Darien stopped short. "What?"

"No, you shouldn't make Rini live with you."

"Why not?" Darien demanded. "You didn't even heard all my reasons yet!"

"No, but you talked about Rini like she's a pet hamster you would have to take care of," said Motoki. "If that's how you still see her, then it's not good for either of you if she stays with you."

"Yes, but," began Darien impatiently.

"No buts." Motoki shook his head, agitating the air. "Are you thinking about what's best for Rini, or are you thinking of Serena? You're Rini's dad. You have an obligation to put her before everything else. Is it going to best for her if she comes to live in a place where her face is rubbed every day into the fact that her own father doesn't love her? Or is it better for her to live with the Tsukinos?"

"I do…lov…" Darien's mouth gummed up with the lie. He blew out a breath as though spitting the gum from his mouth and tried again. "Well, I wouldn't rub her face in it."

"You don't think she feels it every time you're in front of her?" said Motoki. "Just being near you right now rubs her face in it. If it didn't, she wouldn't ignore you the way you ignore her. She would act like Serena and just keep talking at you regardless." Motoki paused. "Sorry, Dare, but I think it would be a damn bad idea for Rini to live with you."

Darien had nothing to say. He felt as though he had come to Motoki expecting a mouthful of cherry-flavored medicine and had received a punch in the teeth instead. With effort he forced his bat ears back into normal ones.

"Now let me ask you a question, Dare." Motoki turned to face him directly. "You and Serena, you've had Dr. Tomoe, right? How is he? Is he good?"

Darien frowned. Involuntarily he felt his mind tendrilling out – he yanked it back hastily before he could invade Motoki's mind. That was something Endymion would do, not him – not him –

"He's very unnerving." Darien remembered the doctor's almost taunting tone when he spoke to him about Serena as she slept on his knee. "Actually, he really pisses me off." He rallied his thoughts. "But I've never heard anything against his actual professional skills. Why?"

He heard Motoki shake his head. "No reason. Just – no, it's nothing."

Darien knit his brows. "I just spilled my guts to you voluntarily and you won't tell my why you just asked me a severely cryptic question?"

He felt the tendrils unwinding from his mind again. Quickly he clapped down in them, fear spurting in his veins.

"Wait. I'm sorry, Motoki. I shouldn't have said that. I'll let it be."

"No." Motoki shook his head again. "It's okay. I knew I'd have to tell you guys eventually. My dad's got brain cancer. The doctors don't give him long." Motoki's voice cracked. "About six months."

L

"Oh my God." Serena's hand crept to her mouth. "Fu-Furuhata-san?"

Darien nodded grimly.

"Oh my God…" she whispered again. She stared at him. "But – Darien, the Golden Crystal! Why didn't Motoki just ask you?"

"I don't know." Darien's fingers dug into the bark of the tree branch he straddled outside her window. He heard splintering, crying from the tree, and withdrew his fingers with effort. Couldn't he control _anything_?

"He probably didn't think you could do anything to heal a tumor," Serena soothed.

_No_, thought Darien. More likely Motoki, like Helios, had been frightened by Darien's inexcusable behavior the past few months. Probably he had been too frightened to ask…too frightened of his own friend…

"And now I actually can't do anything about it." Darien pushed away from the thoughts because they were cracks through which Endymion wisped up like a miasma. He needed to be calm – if only he could see Serena's face he could be calm – he knew he could – but he had promised never to take her to Elysion again –

"Darien."

He struggled free again. "I went to see him today. Furuhata-san." He focused on the texture of the bark beneath his hands, the temperature of the December night air pressing against his skin. "His brain's knotted… it feels a vacuum. Like it just absorbed the Golden Crystal's energy instead of being affected by it."

Below him Serena was silent for a moment. Then, "And he's seeing Dr. Tomoe?"

How many sources of anger there were. "Yes."

He felt her shudder. "I really don't like him."

His arms around her would stop the shuddering. "Neither do I." He continued quickly, trying to distract himself from the temptation, "But Motoki said that whatever Tomoe's been doing, it's working. The other doctors said Furuhata-san would be bedridden by now, but under Tomoe's treatment he's still walking…"

The attempt at distraction was to no avail. He felt himself slipping.

Serena pressed her shoulder against the window jamb, shifting on her window seat very quietly so as not to wake Rini. "I guess we shouldn't judge a book by its cover."

Above her, the black-haired youth made a noise of semi-agreement.

Serena looked up from her toes. "Darien?"

He lifted his eyes.

They burned a bright, bright gold, and there seemed to be something glowing on his forehead…mirroring the sigil glowing beneath her silver bangs.

There was no more speaking.

L

"So you see, Uranus and Neptune act superior, but they are actually colossal failures in their assignments," Mercury told Rei. She dropped neatly to the tree branch beside Serena's window, which Mask had occupied but moments earlier. "If they were successful, would these two be doing this? And in front of his sleeping daughter, no less. My, she needs training if she doesn't sense this sort of aura interaction…"

Rei followed Mercury down to the tree branch, climbing carefully down the bark rather than leaping. "You said they were staying away from each other."

"I said _Serena_ and _Darien_ were," corrected Mercury. "And that was _days_ ago, Rei, do try to keep up."

Rei looked warily at the entwined couple inside the room, nearly invisible in the night's darkness, and ignored the rest of Mercury's words. "Then who are they?"

"They are what I am and you are not. They are also a great threat to the goals toward which we have been striving, the poor souls." Mercury's eyes sharpened, her lips curved down.

Rei watched her with apprehension; seldom did she see Mercury looking anything but cavalierly confident.

Mercury noticed. "Don't worry, pretty Rei-chan. I'll explain it to you fully in the near future. But for now, help me with some grunt work and slap this patch onto Darien's forehead, will you? Be careful not to look in his eyes, please. And don't look at Serena either. The consequences could be…" She smiled icily. "What is that expression the Terrans use? _Breathtaking_."

After spending a month with Mercury, Rei recognized a threat when she heard one. She took the patch from the blue-haired Senshi and shut her eyes.

L

"I know you don't celebrate the holiday, old man."

Asanuma rocked back on his haunches in front of the white camellias he had placed in front of the small, leafless cherry blossom tree. There was no grave marker for Rei's grandfather, a Shinto priest, but the few times that Asanuma had spoken to him, after Rei disappeared, he had been in this grove of cherry blossoms, pruning them, watering them, caring for them.

"But it's pretty easy to get lonely this time of year even if you don't do Christmas, and I don't think Rei would want you to feel lonely."

One didn't feel less lonely just because flowers were left for them, so Asanuma settled down in the dirt Indian-style and began to talk.

"Everyone in Japan thinks she's back, but I'm ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent sure they're wrong. I know what Rei looks like pretty well, sir, and that girl with her dad has a face like Rei's, but she sure doesn't have her body. And I know Rei's body pretty well. Since I'm an artist and all." He paused, ducking his head and sighing again. "And because I'm a teenage boy and I'm horny." He propped his cheek on his hand and grinned slightly. "But that sort of stuff's okay when you like a girl like Rei because she'd beat the snot out of me if she knew I was thinking it, so I don't have to feel guilty about it. And _you _don't have to worry about it because she'd never let me do it, so it's all good."

But he sighed again, because the day he would ever see Rei again to get the snot beaten out of him by her seemed to be growing further and further away each day. He knew now from Rini that he was still in love with Rei twenty years in the future and still estranged from her, too.

"I used to think that if I'd gotten powers sooner, I could have helped her." He dug into the dirt with his shoe. "Like, if she'd known that I loved her, she could have found a way to love herself? But I guess it doesn't work that way. People have to learn how to love themselves before they can let other people love them. Otherwise they can't understand why you love them, right, old man? Rei wouldn't have believed that I loved her because she couldn't see any reason why I would. She would have thought that I was lying."

He sighed once more, rocked to his feet.

"I think…I think Rei would have liked Rini. It sounds weird…" he told the camellias, hesitating, "but I wish I could have helped you raise Rei. I would have shown her why she was worth loving."

L

On their expedition to the mall, Serena had asked Buji and Rini if they wanted to go see Santa. Rini had given her a look that was both deeply disappointed and deeply disgusted, as though she had thought that Serena knew by now that she wasn't _five._ Buji had wrinkled his nose and said, "Who cares about THAT Santa, I want to see the one at the Christmas festival. Is it going to be Toki-nii-chan again, nee-chan? Is it?"

Serena had looked at Darien, who had a look almost as disgusted as Rini's on his face, and she had sighed. Were she and Darien really the best choices for the Clauses, she wondered for not the first time. People should start taking bets on which would make the children run first, Darien's bearded glower or Serena's disfigured face.

Such a scenario really wasn't what was best for the children, and she brought this up to Coach at their next rehearsal.

He bristled and bellowed to her that she could be Santa and wear the beard to cover her face so long as she convinced Darien to dress up like Mrs. Claus, which made Darien's face go even whiter around the lips than they had been throughout the whole rehearsal.

Serena didn't dare ask him to trade with her. In fact, she felt quite eager to scurry from the room when the bell rang without looking at him.

But he caught her with his long fingers splayed across the back of her neck instead, and she found herself being propelled into the hallway, out of the hallway, into the courtyard, behind a cluster of bushes behind the building.

"Darien…?" she said in breathless confusion, hoping that he did not feel the goosebumps that were sprouting across the skin at back of her neck beneath his chilly fingers.

There must be a youma attack, of course, he must have sensed a youma that she had not, and steered her out here to transform somewhere hidden –

With just the slightest pressure of his warming fingers he spun her around, and Serena found herself pressed against the cold brick wall. One of his hands still pressed so lightly against the sensitive skin of her neck; the other against the brick wall beside her, trapping her. Her heart was in her mouth as though he held it on a string and had pulled it.

His head had dipped; his mouth was inches from hers.

"Are they really so bad?" His voice was less sound and more just vibrations that thrummed against the sensitive skin of her lips as though he _was_ kissing her…

Her fingers scrabbled against the brick behind her, clenched, she must not remember the last time he had kissed her, she must _not_ –

"A…are…" She managed to rally her vocal cords from the limp noodles they had become in her neck under the pressure of his hand. "Are what?"

"The…" His hand lifted from the wall. Brushed against her waist. Lifted to hover centimeters from her face. "Scars. They haven't…healed at all?"

She clasped her hands around the metal of her brooch, hoping for its sharp coldness to remind her of why she could not lift her hands to hold his wrist and push his hand the rest of that short distance to her face.

But the metal was warm, warm like his hand.

"Damn it!" His voice was a hissed exhalation, and now her face was wrenched up to face his straight-on, and his eyes were burning so brightly that it seemed she could feel heat radiating from them. "I need to _see _– "

And even as he said it it was as though Serena could _not _see, white fog curled at the edges of her vision, it began to swallow her…

"Serena? Serena?"

The warmth vanished from her face and her neck. She blinked. The fog fled her vision to reveal Darien half-cringing into the bush, breathing hard, his hand to his eyes as though a very bright light had penetrated them.

"Sereeeeenaaaaa! Where are you, Muffinhead?"

"It's Haruka," panted Darien. "You…should go…"

"What's wrong?" Serena pushed away from the cold wall, reached for him. "Darien, are you – "

"He's waiting for you!" Darien shot further back into the bushes, his eyes still hidden from her behind his hand. But there was a dark trail of hair beginning to creep up the back of his hand, up his knuckles.

"Darien!" Serena gasped, but it was too late. With a strange sound, part growl, part howl, Darien vanished into thin air.

Into Elysion.

"Serena?"

She spun. Abruptly she was aware of how flushed her cheeks were, how very swollen her lips felt, as though they had been kissed and not just anticipating a kiss, and abruptly she was aware, as though for the first time, that this tawny-haired being who stood a few feet away from her was her boyfriend. The one she should want to kiss, the one she should be kissing.

Treachery. Not even to her princess but to Haruka, an innocent outsider. It filled Serena until she thought she might throw it up, and she covered her still-tingling lips with a trembling hand.

"Ser…" Haruka was staring at her, and the inflection of his voice, the blank expression on his face, were so uncharacteristic of him that Serena found herself backing into that cove of bushes that had sheltered Darien minutes ago. "Seren…"

Then a voice which was so gloriously mundane, so gloriously unrelated to Darien or the Princess or Silver Millennium or Sailor Moon or even Haruka, floated through the courtyard. "Serena?"

Miss Kaioh stepped past the bushes. She saw them, her dark brows puzzled beneath her honey hair.

Then she said, "Haruka?"

Perhaps not unrelated to Haruka, then. Serena watched with her own crinkling brow as Miss Kaioh stepped close to Haruka, put a slender hand on his shoulder.

"Haruka," she said again. Her voice held a note of worry that Serena had never heard in the mellifluous alto before. She lifted a hand to the side of his face. "Haruka. Where are you? Come back, Haruka."

She whispered something, then, bowing her head closer to Haruka, her forehead closer to his chin, and suddenly Serena felt as though she was intruding on a very private moment. She took a step back, further into the bushes. Wished that she could vanish like Darien had – wished that she could vanish to where Darien was. _Please let him be okay…_

"Michiru." Haruka's voice rustled through the stillness.

"Serena's here. Aren't you, Serena?" Miss Kaioh turned, her eyes finding Serena's through the leaves.

Serena swallowed, stepped back out from behind the green shelter. "I – I was leaving," she stammered.

"Nonsense," said the honey-haired woman. "You're his girlfriend, aren't you? I just wanted to make sure you hadn't forgotten your sketchbook."

"No, ma'am. I didn't."

"Are you sure?" Suddenly Haruka's arm was winding around her waist, erasing that spot of tingling where Darien's fingers had brushed like wind blowing the depressions from sand in the desert. That was what she had wanted him to do, wasn't it? Erase Darien from her. But she could still feel him on her face, her lips, the back of her neck, every memory she had, perfumed with that faint scent of roses because he had been in her mind, seen them all – _she had a bunny named Bubbles when she was six cold metal a wild cat killed Bubbles Tuxedo Mask's cape was her favorite thing in the world after Motoki's French fries Bubbles was buried that boy in the hospital was going to be her magic prince_ –

A kiss brushed her hair. Serena stiffened.

"She's forgetful, isn't she?" Haruka said affectionately to Miss Kaioh.

Miss Kaioh said nothing, only watched Haruka with eyes that seemed as deep as oceans.

Then she smiled, her lids crinkling shut, and the effect was gone. "You two enjoy your weekend," she said, and walked back inside.

Haruka's arm dropped from around Serena. She looked up, saw him staring at the door falling slowly shut on its old hinges.

This was, she realized suddenly, what she would feel like when the Moon Princess finally arrived and Darien saw her. A new world would spring up between them, around them, enclose them, cut off everyone else as they looked at each other with ocean-deep eyes and spoke volumes in a second using no words. And he would forget that Serena had ever existed, his awareness of her dropping away just as Haruka's arm had.

Only it would be a million, million, million times worse because she loved Darien as she would never love Haruka even if she was given a millennium to try.

Yes, this would be her future.

She smiled sadly. Took Haruka's hand.

His blueberry eyes flicked down to hers, strayed once more back to the doors, then back to her.

"What is it, Muffinhead?"

The smile cut deeper into her face; she wondered if Darien would ever call her Odango again once the princess had come.

Haruka reached for her, to smooth the crumple from her forehead.

She let him do so, let her face smooth into a smile again beneath his calloused fingers. Then, "Haruka," she said. "I need to talk to you."

L

With a growing sense of idiocy, Sailor Mercury watched the mirror that Pluto had given her.

Of course. Of _course_. How had she failed to notice?

She passed a finger over the mirror's glass, rewinding its record to just before Metallia in Beryl's corpse took Serena's transformation brooch. The demon's teeth crunched into the brooch, and Mercury realized what Ami never had: the brooch was no mere container of Luna's limited magic, as it had begun. Power from Serenity's Silver Crystal must have leaked into the brooch gradually during the year that Serena used it to fight as Sailor Moon.

Mercury tapped the mirror's surface again, and the view twisted, turned, recoalesced to a view of Darien Shields as the silver light began to spill from the brooch in Metallia's jaws.

She had assumed that the golden coating over his eyes was the result of damage from the Silver Crystal's energy making direct contact with his eyes, damage so extensive that even the Golden Crystal had been unequal to the task of healing it. Now, however, she saw that the golden film was actually spreading across his cornea even before his body was engulfed in the blinding light.

Mercury rocked back in her seat. Her heart was beating very fast.

She had not been greeted with such a shock since she found herself alive and aware in a Terran body half a year ago.

Darien Shields' blindness was not a _result_ of the Silver Crystal's energy. It was a _reaction_ to it.

An obviously involuntary reaction on Darien's part…which meant –

Sailor Mercury sprang to her feet. Ice crunched beneath her feet as she began to pace.

Scholars had argued for centuries – for millennia – over whether the Great Crystals were sentient. Ancient records existed of the earliest crystal bearers insisting upon the awareness of their crystals. But by the time these records were discovered, the tradition had become for crystal bearers to keep the secrets of their functions so highly secret that even Mercury, as an Imperial Senshi, had not been privy to them.

But this – this was proof. Mercury had discovered proof that Terra's Golden Crystal was sentient.

Her excitement drained away as reality was reabsorbed into her bloodstream. She was no longer in the Silver Millennium, Fellow of the Galactic College, with hundreds of journals awaiting her next discovery. That civilization was a crumbled corpse, even its skeleton moldered away.

The present in which she lived was one in which no Galactic College existed, one in which millennias of knowledge had been forgotten by all but Pluto, one in which her princess-liege was ignorant of her own identity, powerless to use her crystal, and being targeted by not only Chaos but her own allies.

In this present, Mercury's new discovery was only important if it could help Serena survive.

She returned to her seat. The mirror still lay on her desk, the golden veneer paused halfway in its crawl across dark blue eyes.

The Golden Crystal had prevented the Silver Crystal's energy from coming into contact with Darien Shields' eyes. It had not wanted the energy to come into contact with him – yet it came into contact with the rest of his body. What was the difference?

Mercury's feelings of idiocy spiked. _Of course_. Venusians had begun the cliché about eyes being the window to the soul for a reason. Had the Silver Crystal's energy penetrated through Darien's eyes, it would have immediately stimulated Endymion's complete emergence.

Icicles began to crackle up in excitement along Mercury's fingertips.

The Golden Crystal had _actively _prevented Endymion's flash-form from taking over. The question was _why_? Endymion, with his training to use both the Crystal and his psychometry, would be exponentially more capable of protecting the planet than Darien Shields, just as Mercury was more capable than Ami Mizuno. Pluto had allowed Mercury retain consciousness in Ami's body for precisely that reason. Pluto was planning to free Serenity's flash-form once Saturn was found for precisely that reason.

Why then did the Golden Crystal prefer Darien Shields to Endymion?

Minutes passed without her cerebrum yielding an answer. She pushed the question to the back of her mind and pursued the question, instead, of what could be done with this new information.

This time the answer came to her immediately. But it didn't come from her cerebrum.

It came from Ami Mizuno.

_You wanted a way to prevent Endymion from surfacing so often. _

Her voice was quiet, the whisper of melted water sliding down an icicle.

Immediately Mercury understood to what Ami referred. It was in moments of intense negative emotions that the flashforms were able to emerge. She herself could still remember the dark water in which she had been submerged, the rifts that had appeared like spots of light dancing across its dark surface when Ami's mind was torn by despair and terror, allowing Mercury to slip through them and take control for brief periods.

From glancing at only a few seconds' worth of his brain activity readings on her computer, it was easy for Mercury to determine that Darien Shields' current mental state was eerily reminiscent of Ami's immediately before Mercury had emerged completely. His fear, frustration, and fury kept ripping open holes through which Endymion could escape.

And how much of that frustration and anger was due to his inability to see? Eyes were the windows to the soul, and his eyes were not able to take in Serena…

"Remedy his blindness," said Mercury aloud, testing the conclusion on her tongue. The chances of success were fifty percent – sixty percent if Mikai cooperated.

"Very good, Ami," she said gently. "Thank you."

Mercury felt her floating ever so slightly closer to the surface, tentatively, like a deep-sea fish afraid of the light. But the girl's faint happiness threaded like weak warm currents through the water.

L

The preparations for the festival, as a rule, were only supposed to take up one period each day, but even before the eve of the festival arrived, all the teachers had given up trying to lecture. Ms. Haruna had begun to play Christmas carols from her computer speakers and help Kim sew the last-minute adjustments to the elf costumes as the rest of the class finished coloring in posters and gluing chains of red and green paper.

Coach was growing more and more antsy as the day came closer, and he pulled Serena and Darien out of their classes to come have "dress rehearsals" in the gym where the North Pole set was being finished by the Shop students for transport to the skating rink that afternoon.

The set was rather underwhelming at this moment, since none of the pieces were put together yet, but what did impress Serena was the throne that had been built for Santa.

Well, and for Mrs. Claus, too, she realized as Coach ushered her toward it.

The ornate gold-painted throne was actually closer in size to a loveseat, a single long cushion of red velvet big enough for two people, which meant that if Coach was expecting her to sit with Darien, he was also expecting the kids to sit on Darien's lap, not on the cushion. Serena sighed, thinking of what a potentially explosive situation this was, for she sensed that Darien still had not quite reconciled himself to letting small children sit on him. This was about the extent of what she could sense, because ever since that day in the courtyard he had kept his face and aura as stiffly ironed as his uniform shirt.

Coach had brought along his P.E. class, and as Serena seated herself gingerly beside Darien, trying not to notice his warmth, he lined them up single-file, snaking away from the throne.

"Okay!" he bellowed. "Take turns telling the Clauses what you want for Christmas."

Serena looked at the little freshman girl cringing at the front of the line, her face red and mortified.

She looked at Darien, and his face – showing emotion for the first time in days – held similar horror.

"I'm sure you don't have to sit in his lap," she assured the girl hastily.

"No, that's your job, right, Serena?" said Tonami as he passed by with a long board.

"Exactly!" agreed Coach.

For the rest of the period he kept telling her and Darien look more like a happily married couple. Tsukino, lean over Shields like this; Shields, hold Tsukino's waist like _this_ –thankfully he refrained from demonstrating the latter, as they were both already traumatized by his demonstration of the former.

Serena sensed Darien growing more and more tense, so when the bell rang for lunch, she withdrew her rigid body from inside him arm and took his hand instead.

"Come on!" she said, casually, as though they hadn't just spent the last hour practically sitting on each other. "Let's go get lunch. I'm STARVING. Do you think they'll have pizza today?"

"They have pizza every day, Odango," said Darien in a tired voice, but he followed her to the cafeteria.

L

"T'was the day of the festival, and all through the school, not a student was studying, not even the kids who were super un-cool!" Asanuma sang as they clambered onto the school bus. "C'mon, guys, join in!"

"Yeah, somebody drown out his awful voice!" shouted someone from the back of the bus, and Asanuma stuck out his tongue.

"Watch it, kid, I know Santa!" he threatened. "You want coal in your stocking?"

"I'll give you coal in your face," said Tonami as he passed by, and Asanuma tackled him.

"No horseplay on the bus!" Coach hollered as he climbed up the bus steps. He caught sight of Asanuma and Tonami wrestling in a seat. "NO PUBLIC DISPLAYS OF AFFECTION EITHER, ITTO!"

Serena muffled a laugh behind her hand, not wanting Coach to hear and turn his attention on her.

"Hey, Serena, can you hold these for me? I've got to help Toki with the gingerbread."

"Sure!" Serena took the huge brown paper bag from Lita and peeked into it. A rainbow of frostings, gumdrops, candy canes, peppermints, and sprinkles sparkled up at her.

"No drooling in the gingerbread decorations." A gentle hand pulled her ponytail, and she looked over her shoulder to see Motoki sliding into the bus seat behind hers and Lita's. He looked very tired, now that she knew to look for it. Sorrow and shame swept over her as she looked at his smiling face. Motoki was so much better than the rest of them.

"Okay, okay!" Motoki held up his hands. "No need for that sad look! I'm sure Lita won't mind if you eat one of the candy canes."

Serena smiled. "Thanks, Toki-nii-chan. Um…" She hesitated. "Are you okay with not being Santa this year?"

Motoki's smile dimmed somewhat. "Honestly, Serena, I don't think I'd do very well being jolly this year. I'm glad Darien's doing it."

Lita snorted next to Serena, and Serena wondered suddenly if she knew about Motoki's dad. "Yeah, because Shields is just so jolly."

"Where IS good old Santa?" asked Asanuma, wandering back to the front of the bus and sliding into the seat next to Motoki.

"Getting last-minute instructions from Coach." Serena nodded toward the first bus seat, where Darien's black head was visible next to Coach's Santa-hatted one. Apparently, Coach's last minute instructions consisted of him singing "Jingle Bells" at the top of his voice.

"Wow. He's REALLY not going to be jolly after fifteen minutes of THAT," said Lita, and for once she actually sounded sorry for Darien.

L

The noise all around them was deafening. There were Christmas carols blaring, and people shouting to "Hold this, hold this!" and girls laughing and the background scraping of skates across the ice, and then the fresh overflow of new noise as the skating rink doors were opened and all of Juuban Elementary poured inside.

Inside the enclosure of Christmas trees that had been set up to wall in the North Pole from the rest of the rink, Serena fidgeted nervously in her Mrs. Claus costume.

"Would you _stop_?" hissed Darien, who was being very uncomfortably affected by all her wiggling. He hadn't killed Coach during all that asinine singing, but he was going to now. Why couldn't they have separate thrones, for God's sake –

"_Sorry_!" hissed Serena back. "I just have a bad feeling about this! Don't you?"

He Looked at her. "Do_ I_ have a bad feeling about this? Where have you been for the past month?"

Serena huffed and fidgeted some more. Darien groaned internally, a hand lifting to his temple.

"What if we mess up?" Serena turned to him, still bouncing. He had the feeling that her very very blue eyes were very very wide as she looked at him and he very very much wanted to be able to see them. No. He would NOT let Endymion get out. Not here, in the midst of hundreds of children. He took a deep breath.

"What if we scar one of them for life?" Serena worried.

"If we scar one of them then we still won't be as bad as Asanuma." To keep his voice and words light was as difficult as putting his arm around her shoulders without kissing her was. "Now sit still and smile."

And smile Serena did. With Darien's arm around her, smiling was all she could do, that or burst into tears, and she certainly wasn't going to do that. Not here.

The first child was escorted in by Tonami, and Serena's grin grew wider. For the kindergartener was one she knew from the arcade.

"Yuko-chan!" she exclaimed, then jumped as Darien's cold fingers pulled her earlobe.

"Wha – "

"You're _Mrs. Claus, _remember?" he said into her ear.

"Oh! Oh, yes!" Flushing, Serena turned back to smile at Yuko, only to see the little girl grinning back.

"Serena-nee-san!" she greeted, scrambling up into Serena's lap.

Darien snorted. "Too late."

Serena gave him a face, for they had both been stupid, after all. How they had expected the children not to recognize them, her with her scars and him with his golden eyes, was beyond her…

"Don't worry, onee-san," said Yuko, patting her cheek. "The elves told us that you two are helping Santa find out what we want because he's too busy at the North Pole right now."

"Oh! Well, thank goodness," said Serena, and plucked a piece of fake snow from Yuko's black hair. "Well, Yuko-chan, what do you want for – "

She stopped, eyes widening, and looked up at Darien; she had just stolen his line.

But he was smiling ever so slightly behind his beard. "Go on," he said in a voice that she supposed he meant to sound deep and Santa-y.

She elbowed him. "Sound jollier." She looked back at Yuko. "Sorry, Yuko-chan. We're still new at this. So what would you like for Christmas? The new Feed Me Mommy doll?"

"YES!" squealed Yuko. Her hands and legs flailed in such sheer delight that she nearly toppled out of Serena's lap. "How did you know, nee-san?"

"Oh…" Serena winked. "Just a little Christmas magic."

L

"I can't believe how many of these kids you know," said Darien half an hour later, as they waited for the next kid to be brought in.

Serena rubbed at her neck where the faux-fur from her Mrs. Claus collar had begun to get rather itchy.

"Me neither," she admitted, twisting out from beneath his arm to examine him. His hat had come a little askew, so she fixed it, then readjusted his beard. "They're mostly from the arcade. I guess that's why Motoki was such a hit last year; he knew what practically all of them wanted just from seeing them at the arcade!"

Thus far, all of the kids had trotted in with Tonami, taken one look at the throne, and exclaimed, "Nee-san!" before catapulting themselves into Serena's arms. This trend may have made a lesser man jealous; stoic Darien felt only relief that he had not yet had to hold a kid on his lap.

But considering what – or rather, who – came next, he may have counted his chickens too soon.

"Next one!" called Tonami through the candy cane arch. Quickly Serena and Darien rearranged themselves, Serena ducking back beneath his arm and Darien pushing an escaped curl back under her hat.

"Oh," came a voice, and they turned to look at the child beside Tonami. "This is too good."

Darien removed the fake spectacles from the end of his nose to massage it. "I'm getting really tired of second graders sounding like Asanuma…"

Tonami nudged Buji, giving Darien and Serena a confused look. "C'mon, kid, don't you want to tell Mrs. Claus what you want?"

"Why, yes," said Buji. He lifted his arms up to be carried. "I would like to sit on Santa's lap, please."

"What?" Darien rocked backward, his arm leaving Serena's shoulders to bar the space in front of him. "No way! Sit on Serena – "

"On who?" Buji blinked innocently. "I don't see Serena anywhere. Do _you, _Mrs. Claus?"

Serena couldn't smother her giggles any longer. She burst into laughter. Laughter that only grew more hysterical when Buji took off in a running start to launch himself into Darien.

"No – ow – get off – BUJI – "

When the dust and flying hanks of hair settled, Buji was on Darien's lap and Darien's fake beard was hanging from his ear.

"You might want to try some Rogaine on that," said Buji, patting Darien's face with a little hand and grinning as he turned toward Serena, sprawling his legs across the arm of the throne as though Darien was an armchair on which he was making himself comfortable. "Now, for Christmas, I want…"

"You know," Darien gritted out, "those Bleach DVDs are still at my apartment, I can take them back – "

"What's that, Mrs. Claus?" Buji leaned toward Serena. "You want to know what Darien got Serena for Christmas? _Well…_"

A hand clamped over Buji's mouth.

Serena followed the hand up its red-clad arm to Darien's flushed face. And burst out into laughter all over again.

Darien removed his hand from Buji's mouth, and glowered at the boy as he laughed in delight. But the combined contagion of both their laughter was too much even for him, and after a moment he found himself smiling.

L

"This is ridiculous!" Rini's voice should have been a grumble, but her eyes were darting to and fro like a rabbit trying to escape a ring of bloodhounds. "The teacher can't make me do this – "

"Oh yes she can!" Asanuma pounced as she made a break for it, catching her by the stupid scarf that Serena had insisted she wear that day so she wouldn't catch a cold. "You have to get a picture taken with Santa so you can make it into a Christmas card for your family, remember?"

Rini glared. "You know I don't have any fam – "

"You think I wouldn't want a pretty picture of my adorable Rini-chan to put on the fridge?" Asanuma wagged his head, making the bell at the end of his Santa hat jingle. "Wait, do we still have refrigerators in the future? Or is there something much cooler, like – "

One of her classmates was looking at them, Rini noticed, and she went to stamp on Asanuma's feet and shut him up.

But then suddenly there were hands under her armpits, lifting her up and back. Her eyes went wide. She thrashed – kicked – a scream bubbling up in her throat –

"Whoah! OW!"

She was dropped, landed hard on the cheap carpeting.

She found herself staring at her hands…and a pair of curly-toed green shoes a few centimeters away from her hands. Her eyes travelled up the shoes to red- and green-striped tights to an elf costume and the teenage boy inside it, holding his side.

Oops.

"Sorry about that," Asanuma was saying to him. "I was telling her a scary story, she got scared – "

"Well, go do your job then, Itto, instead of harassing the little kids." The elf-boy looked at Rini, shifting from a scowl to a rather forced smile. "Ready to meet Santa?"

Rini glared at Asanuma – he could have _told _her it was a human grabbing her, not a youma – and stamped past the elf-boy and his friend, to the candy-cane arch.

If the look that the students who constructed the North Pole set had been trying to evoke was that of something straight from a Christmas card, they had succeeded. Beneath an arc created by two towering candy canes, down a red carpet, inside a cove of tremendously tinseled Christmas trees, a golden throne sat among mounds of fake white snow. Mr. and Mrs. Claus – Rini's brain practically sneered their names – sat on the throne, resplendent in red sateen. Buji was sitting there on Santa's lap with his dark hair shining with the red and green lights that reflected from the Christmas tree ornaments, and Serena and Darien were both leaning down to hear what he was saying, their heads almost touching, and they were all laughing –

"Santa!" hollered the elf-boy from right behind her.

Rini started. The little family in front of her all snapped their heads up and looked straight at her, and she felt like an intruder, and she hated them and she hated that stupid elf-boy –

"Time for the next kid!"

"Rini!" exclaimed Serena from beneath her ridiculous hat. "Bye, Buji – see you later – "

"What are you waiting for, kiddo? C'mon, tell Santa what you want – "

The other elf-boy, this one in red, had seized Rini's hand and was pulling her toward the two thrones, and she wanted to dig her feet into the thick red carpet and not let him take her, but that would be immature, she told herself, immature, and she was not immature, she was not, she wouldn't cry, she wouldn't –

"I want," she began, trying to just get out whatever stupid wish so that she could just leave and no one would ever get the chance to realize the stupid delusions that she had concocted, the impossibilities that she had thought possible. "I want – "

"No, you have to sit on Santa's lap while you tell him – "

Rini fought past her raging thoughts to muster her strongest glare – then there were hands under her arms again, lifting her up, and her father's voice behind her saying quietly and tensely, "Just come here. You're drawing attention."

His knees were sharp and he smelled like gingerbread and roses. Just barely she felt the pillow beneath his Santa costume pushing against her back, and his uncomfortable exhalation over the top of her hair buns.

This was where she was supposed to have been for the past six years. On this lap.

The realization came as swiftly and as unwanted as hot tears. And just as painfully came the awareness that if her mother had been Serena, this was where she would have been all this time, on this lap, except that it wouldn't have been still as stone and leaning backward away from her as though she was a disease instead of holding her close in a hug, and she knew suddenly what she wanted for Christmas, and she reached up and grabbed Serena's sleeve, trying to find her eyes as she turned around to tell her father that –

Suddenly, the floor shook.

Then shrieks and crashes erupted outside the wall of Christmas trees.

L

"Serena!"

Darien was pushing Rini into her arms, but Serena had already begun to grab her from him.

She clutched the little girl, her grip unaffected by the child's wild thrashing to escape. "Darien, you were – "

" – right, wasn't I?" Beneath the fake beard, the curve of his lips was grim. "Can you –"

"Yes, I'll put her in my Subspace pocket!" said Serena hurriedly. "Darien, there's more than one – "

"Five," he said. "I think."

"Plus a Sister." Serena's chest was constricting. So many youma at once; this was bad, really bad –

"YOU GUYS!" Tonami burst through the candy-cane arch. "Come ON! There's youma! We have to get out of here!"

"WE'RE COMING!" bellowed Darien back. "GO!"

Tonami disappeared back outside. Darien transformed and darted out of the enclosure in a black blur. Serena clutched Rini closer.

"Okay, Rini, I need you to transform – "

A meter away from them, the Christmas trees crashed inward. Someone screamed, Serena wasn't sure if it was Rini or herself; terror was filling her insides.

And it began to seep from her in a cold sweat too when she saw what the object that had knocked the trees over was.

A giant cube of ice, taller than Darien. Motoki was frozen inside it, unconscious and armored, his arm bent at an impossible angle.

"Tok – " Serena's scream was cut off by Rini's voice over her mouth.

"Shut up." Rini's voice was fierce and hot in her ear. "Get somewhere you can transform."

But there was nowhere! With the trees knocked down, Serena could see across the whole skating rink. It was packed with people, seething like an ocean. White-faced youma, far more than five, stood like buoys in the midst of the glowing blue sea created by the mass of children and teenagers having their energy sucked away. Beneath them, in their midst, Serena could see people who were still conscious crawling on hands and knees, scrambling to escape the limp bodies, and even as she watched, some of their eyes fell on her. If it was only her that she had to worry about she would have transformed immediately, let her identity be revealed, but Rini had to be her first priority…she needed Rini to transform without being seen, to become a flower so that Serena could fit her in her Subspace pocket. Her heart beat fast; where was the Sister that Darien had sensed?

Over the cries and moans and cackling a bellow rang out. Orange light washed through the room. Again, the voice cried out; it was Asanuma's.

Energy exploded in a firework of blue below the ceiling, over the gingerbread booth. Asanuma must have succeeded in dusting a youma, she thought with a rush of relief – but before the released energy dissipated, the other youma's white faceless heads turned up. The single black holes in their faces began to stretch and stretch; the dim blue sparks zoomed into them.

"DAMN IT!" hollered Asanuma's voice.

Then there was lightning suddenly eating through the air toward a youma only a few meters from Serena and Rini. The youma turned toward the attack – then vanished.

The lightning hurtled like a misaimed boomerang into the wall and exploded.

Lita's voice shrieked an expletive.

Serena snatched the opportunity granted by the billowing out of dust from the exploded wall. She took off, scrambling over the upset trees, nearly falling down, then scrambling toward the red EXIT sign glowing over the door. Once she got Rini in her subspace pocket she could transform, once she got Rini safe she could fight –

"Nee-chan!"

Serena's heart stopped. So did her feet. She skidded to a step, only half-aware of Rini's nails digging into the back of her neck as she held on.

"Buji?" she whispered, blinking against the dust that stung her eyes. Right beside her was the counter where ice skates were rented.

"Back here, nee-chan!" A shiny head popped up over the counter. "Get back here!"

Serena debated in her head as she scrambled over the counter, landing behind it. She decided almost immediately; Buji could be trusted; she would make Rini transform even if it revealed the truth to him; if worse came to worse, Darien could remove his memory – Rini seemed to be sensing her thoughts; her nails were digging deeper into Serena's skin –

"Stay here, nee-chan! Be safe!" Buji whispered.

Then he scrambled back out into the main area!

"Buji!" Serena whisper-screamed, shooting back to her feet.

Rini yanked her back down. "Stop!"

"But Buji – !"

"Let me transform so you can transform, and then you can save that idiot!" Rini hissed. Almost immediately she began to glow a faint white, then shrank into a white carnation.

Serena caught it just before it fluttered to the floor. With hands slickened by sweat, she fumbled the flower into her subspace pocket.

Then she grabbed her brooch. "Moon Prism Power!"

Right away she knew something was wrong. Hesitation and confusion muddled Darien's end of the rope.

She sprang back into the skating rink's main area, boot heels jamming painfully into her feet as she pounded onto the floor.

Her tiara snapped into a sword in her fingers, and she pointed it at the closest youma. "Twilight – " she began, but a spike of emotion from Mask stilled her tongue.

_No!_ came his feeling through the rope, so clear that it was almost words. _Don't!_

_Why?_ she tried to send back to him, but all that she received was confusion, confusion, searing indecision.

Then a new feeling penetrated her. A tugging beneath her ribcage… Sucking, sucking exhaustion…

"AHA!" A scream rang through the room. "MISTRESS! I'VE FOUND HER, MISTRESS!"

The tug beneath Serena's ribcages became a yank. She felt her transformation flicker and fall away, the magic collapsing like a house of cards beneath the strength of the drain on her energy.

Then a youma materialized in front of her.

Serena looked up at it through blurring eyes…vaguely she realized that it was familiar…oh, yes, it was the spider she had fought in the arcade…it had acid webbing…it had gotten away…

"Look! Look, Mistress!" It held something wound around two of its legs, a soft white strand…

Serena felt distant, fuzzy dismay. They had been able to detect Rini's energy even when she was in Serena's SubSpace pocket…

"My. That was dreadfully easy."

Serena looked up from blearily following the thread's path back to where it originated beneath her bow and blinked up at the white-haired woman now standing beside the youma. She was familiar, too…

"To be honest, I expected a little bit more stimulating of a hunt for you, little princess. My, but you've changed! Prisma told me you'd disguised yourself, but she didn't say anything about _these_ hideous things…"

Her icy fingers closed in a pinch around Serena's cheek and used the grip to turn her face this way, then that, to look at her scars. Serena did not have enough energy even to move her eyeballs in their sockets, much less pull away from Bertie's grip.

Half-unconscious, she regarded the ice-covered torso in front of her face…orange flickered in it, a reflection.

That was the only warning she got.

"Hmm. Well, let's get you back to dear Rubeus before we have to deal with any more of these annoying – oof!"

It was enough. She shoved backward as Asanuma plowed Bertie into the spider-youma. Steam exploded in a monstrous hiss.

Abruptly her ribcage loosened; she was able to breathe. She scrambled across the ice on all fours, grabbing her brooch once more and transforming, sliding, slipping as the ribbons engulfed her, was Rini okay, what if they'd taken all her energy, and –

"YOU!" came an infuriated shriek behind her, and that was the only warning.

Icy wind rushed past her, whipping her hair into her face, and then something monstrously huge crashed into the wall.

It toppled onto the floor, shaking the ground.

"Never fear, Mr. Itto, I know how to deal with you now." The Sister's voice was frigid with satisfaction.

Sailor Moon blinked the frost from her eyelashes and looked; her eyes shot wide.

The behemoth that had hit the wall was a giant ice cube, three times as big as the one that contained Motoki.

And Asanuma was frozen in it, upside down and little red fireworks of blood surrounding his fists in the ice. Moon couldn't tell if he was conscious or not.

"Just try melting your way out of that one," the sister told Asanuma inside the ice cube. She turned around, her eyes landed on Moon. "You know what superheated water is, don't you?"

She didn't wait for an answer.

"Of course you don't. Steam. He'll boil himself alive if he tries to burn his way out of my little trap. He can stay there until I'm ready to play."

She leaned back, began to twirl her white braid around her finger as she regarded Moon. "So you're a Senshi, hmm? Idiot Prisma. She should have specified the energy's color. Of course a Senshi would have different energy from these Terrans."

Moon stood, somewhat shakily, noting that her usual red boots had been replaced with ice skates. She redirected her eyes to the half-dusted youma corpse next to the woman – Bertie, Rini had called her – and then to the woman herself.

She readjusted her sweaty grip on her sword. Of all the opponents she had ever gone up against, this Sister seemed the most powerful – but she wasn't, she told herself. She had taken out Motoki and Asanuma in only a few minutes, but they were new to this –

"Oh, I dispatched your other friend, too, in case you didn't notice." The sister gestured over her shoulder.

Moon followed her hand and saw Jupiter, her top half encased in ice and her long legs mottled angry red, lying in a pool of water that sparked and crackled angrily.

"Clearly she hasn't taken even the most basic of science courses," said the sister. "Attempting to electrocute oneself out of ice…unwise. Most unwise."

– Lita was not new to this.

Still – Moon squared her stance – both Lita and Asanuma's attacks had worked against them. Her attacks should not have any such rebounds because her power was not elementally based.

She reassured herself with this logic, but sweat still pooled beneath her collar. The knowledge of Rini's presence in her SubSpace pocket was like something she could feel, like having a baby inside her – if she was hurt, what would happen to Rini?

"Clearly, you're not the princess. I'm Bertie, by the way," said the sister. "Not that you'll tell me, but where is she? I imagine you have her hidden safely somewhere?"

Moon lifted her sword a few centimeters, slightly nonplussed by the sister's cordial introduction of herself. "Um…you could say that."

"Oh, dispense with the dramatics, please." Bertie stepped forward. "Your allies are all useless at the moment, and if you fancy that you will be able to avoid the same fate, you've miscalculated. Stop wasting both of our time and direct me to the princess."

Moon took a step to the left. She could still feel Darien conscious in the back of her mind; why had the sister said that all her allies were useless?

"Why do you want her?"

"For bait, I imagine," answered Bertie. "Her father is most eager to recover her." She laughed, as though something was funny. "And so is Chaos!"

Moon took another step. "Why?"

"Why do you think?" Bertie stopped laughing and looked at her with her lips curled. "She's the most powerful being that's ever been born. Who _wouldn't_ want a god to shape into whatever mold they wanted?" She rolled her eyes, lifted her arm. "Goodness, I just can't _abide_ brainless beings – "

Ice rocketed out of her fingertips. Moon, prepared for her action, shot to the right, her skates slicing through the ice with a swiftness that she had never before possessed.

She heard the ice punching into the wall behind her, cracking; she crunched her elbows in tighter to her sides and crouched, straining her legs to go faster. She risked one arm from her position to aim her sword toward where she thought Bertie was. Silver light shot out of it.

The stream of ice ceased.

Moon did not stop skating but rather flipped around, in a very shaky axel, to see if she had caught Bertie.

Instead, she saw a spear of ice shooting straight into her face.

L

The first youma was disposed of easily enough. Tuxedo Mask had a stealth and speed that both Jupiter and Asanuma lacked, and he was able to decapitate it with his cane-blade before it could react to his presence.

He felt the gush of energy that its crumbling body released, energy that was just as quickly sucked into the gaping maws of the youma that surrounded him. He growled and dove into the thick again, swiping his blade, but the youma were aware of him now. They vanished into vortexes before he could cut through them.

The constant percussion made by the vacuums of air molecules as they vanished and displacement of air molecules as they reappeared began to build a pounding pressure in his temples. Even his balance began to be affected, and by the time he could notice this effect and compensate, suddenly the number of youma had doubled without him noticing when they had arrived.

Then suddenly the level of energy around him intensified and jumped. It was like a candle flame leaping to reach air when it began to drown in its own wax, and Darien knew – whether from instinct or from the memories of the dead prince clamoring inside him – that it meant the youma were now drawing energy from the life-force of their victims. Victims who were children that Serena had held on her lap, children that had given him shy smiles, children who might not live to see what Santa got them for Christmas this year if Darien didn't save them.

Tuxedo Mask lunged forward, abandoning stealth for the greatest speed he could muster. His blade shot out, centimeters from lopping off the youma's head –

Then the Golden Crystal pulsed in his pocket, a scalding scream of warning.

Barely in time he flipped his blade to the flat edge, thwacking into the being's neck but not severing it. He vaulted over it, landing behind it, and stared.

That youma was _human_.

The Golden Crystal pushed at him to check the other youma; he stretched out and roped his awareness around them… and half of them were human, children from the festival, unconscious and enveloped like skeletons are enveloped by skin inside an aura that was identical to that of the genuine youma, an aura that sucked energy just like the youma.

He felt someone aiming for one of the child-youma, Moon's power-aura coming to bear on them, and he hurled with his mind, _No!_ _Don't!_

The energy spike climbed higher, and Mask's heart rate with it. He couldn't kill the children-youma, but how else could he stop the aura enveloping them from sucking the life from the other children –

Serena's powers flashed in his mind, hot panic and sour fear bursting across his tongue.

Endymion thrashed to life.

Mask went rigid, falling half to his knees as the royal inside him shoved his phantom arm into Mask's hand as though it was a glove and seized his blade to sweep the blade across all of their throats, youma and human alike, to get to her –

He felt the spray of pain inside his mouth as Bertie's ice tore into her; he scrabbled for his sword, unable to tell if he was Endymion or Darien and not caring so long as he could reach her –

Then a cooling presence arrived at the edge of his consciousness. It jarred him just enough for him to realize that he was Darien and to remember that he should be fighting to keep the children alive –

And the battle began.

L

"You're sure about this?"

"Even if I told you I was, you wouldn't believe me." Mercury folded herself into one of the chairs at his kitchen table. "Surely you can deduce that it's a reasonable risk."

"I don't know how I'd feel about myself as a human being if I called what you're planning to do to him _reasonable,_" said Mikai.

Mercury shrugged. "He's experienced worse pain, believe me." She eyed him. "You of all people should remember how much pain Venus's love-me chain inflicts."

"Should I?" Mikai raised his eyebrow back at her. "Speaking of things we _should_ remember, what did Ami do for Christmas?"

Mercury frowned at him. But reluctantly, because ever so faintly inside her, Ami was responding, letting the images float away from her in a clear sign that she wanted Mercury to reply to the Shittenou, she closed her eyes and narrated: "Usually she was at the boarding school she used to go to. She played Solitaire or Minesweeper until it was time for breakfast, and usually the headmaster would play a few games of chess with her. She liked playing chess. Then she went back to the dormitory and wrote her mother a thank-you note for the gift cards she sent."

She opened her eyes again and regarded Mikai. _Is that sufficiently pitiful for you?_ she wanted to ask, suddenly incensed, somehow suddenly certain that Mikai wished to humiliate her, to rub her face into Ami Mizuno's weakness.

He hummed noncommittally. "I guess she had me beat. At the orphanages we usually went to the cemetery at Christmas. Then I got adopted, so…" He shrugged.

This response Mercury had not expected. Nor had she expected the ire to drain so quickly from her, nor Ami's fluttering sympathy.

Abruptly Mikai spoke. "I still don't understand why you wanted me to give the little guy my cell number." He propped his feet on the legs of the chair in which she sat and leaned back, regarding her.

With a neat and very impersonal movement of her leg she unhooked his foot from her chair. "Then once again your intelligence fails to meet my expectations. I hardly have enough time to explain my every action to you."

"Of course not." Mikai put his foot back up on the chair legs again. "Anyway, it's much more fun when I have to interpret them myself."

Mercury's head twitched suddenly to the side, as though listening to something. The visor across her eyes became opaque.

A grim smile curved her lips. "Prepare to have fun, then. And remember your instructions."

She vanished.

And not a millisecond later, Mikai's cell phone buzzed in his pocket.

L

There was no time for Serena to stretch her tiara from its sword form into a shield. There wasn't even enough time for her to coalesce the concentration for a nonverbal attack. There was only enough time for her to gasp, "Twilight Flash!"

Silver light shot from the blade of her sword. It sliced through the middle of the crystal, not halting its momentum but offsetting the trajectory of the two shards enough that they grazed against Moon's ribs instead of punching through her abdomen. Then they clattered to the ice.

Moon pushed her skating speed up again, wincing as the movement stretched her torn skin. Pain or not, she was not going to be a sitting duck for Bertie.

The white-haired sister laughed, her eyes following Moon around the ice as she herself lounged on the rim of the wall encircling the rink. "Your defense hasn't improved since our last encounter, Sailor Moon."

She blurred and reappeared right behind Moon. "I'm glad." She pushed.

Moon went sprawling across the ice. She scrambled back up to her feet, the blades on the bottom of her boots tearing through her skirt and skin as though they were made of paper. She barely noticed, concentrated both on avoiding Bertie and on what the woman had said. Her defense was –

"Pitiful."

Bertie appeared behind her, and icy cold lashed across Moon's face. She gasped, blinking rapidly and coughing, then crumpled as Bertie slammed a foot into her stomach.

"You're not even forcing me to use one of the moves I spent so long designing." Bertie planted a foot on Moon's stomach and looked down at her with disappointed chagrin across her delicate features. "Come now, dear."

Moon doubled, scissoring her stomach muscles against Bertie's boot. Bertie stumbled, and Moon scrambled from beneath her foot. Then she fought to her feet, stretching her tiara to place it in a guarding position once more between her and the Sister. Rini shouldn't have been affected by Bertie grinding her foot into Moon's stomach, right? Moon watched Bertie carefully, one hand hovering above her stomach. Please let Rini be alright…

Bertie smiled. "How about this?" she proposed. "I'll give you a head start. Thirty seconds. Attack me as much as you want, and I won't even try to deflect it."

Moon took another scraping step backward.

"Time is ticking, Sailor Moon…" Bertie lifted her brows.

Moon raised her tiara. So far she had not had much luck using Twilight Flash…

She aimed the sword, began the words – "Moon…" – then flung it. "TIARA MAGIC!"

Several things happened simultaneously.

Moon saw Bertie blur out of sight. Her tiara shot through empty air and hit the opposite wall with a flash of light.

She heard a cry – whether it was Tuxedo Mask or someone else, she did not know.

She felt ice seize her ankles.

She saw another javelin of ice speeding at her face.

The shock punched the breath from her lungs, and perhaps it was only that emptying of her insides that made her duck in time.

But even in time was too late. She felt the ice tear across the skin of her back, like a dog's cold tongue licking down her spine.

A cry of pain escaped her.

She half-collapsed, shins banging painfully against the columns of ice that now imprisoned them, then caught herself against the ice and pushed herself back up with her hand.

Bertie's soft laugh was right in her ear. "No wonder you die."

Moon would have felt a chill down her spine if she had been able to feel her spine. Her right side did not seem to be working. She couldn't feel her legs either. Had there been poison in that spear?

No, she realized as she felt the lightest warmth trickle down the small of her back. That ice spear had gone right along her spine when she ducked – along her spinal cord.

"I think we'll do this quickly," said Bertie. "It doesn't seem as though our masked friend will be held up for much longer by the little conflict I gave him."

Moon gasped as she felt unbearably icy water submerging her lower body.

"Shhh, shhh," soothed Bertie. "It's over so quickly – suffocation in ice is a beautiful way to die. You'll be wonderfully preserved. I'll even be able to examine you afterwards."

Now all of her limbs were numb. Moon gasped and gulped and tried to shout for Darien, but the shock of the cold was too much, and now it was swirling into her mouth, her nose –

"What's this?" she heard Bertie's voice, suddenly angry, as though through a pane of glass. "Why isn't – "

L

"_That_ is a little baby called a colligative property." Mikai rapped his knuckles on the wall surrounding the ice rink, pulling the woman's attention to him, away from Serena – or from Sailor Moon, rather.

She obliged, turning around to glare at him. The muddy water dropped from her invisible hold on it in the air, splashing to the ice of the rink.

"Pretty blonde like you probably hasn't heard of it," Mikai continued, waiting for her to aim an attack at him. He was rather interested to see how effectively this chainmail he was wearing beneath his tunic deflected attacks. "Do you know what a solute is? If you put it into water, the water needs lower temperatures to freeze."

"I KNOW what a solute is!" the woman spat. But Mikai saw her eyes flickering toward the muddy puddle.

"There's more solute where that came from," offered Mikai. And there was, he'd been inspired by Gaara's gourd-carrying and brought a whole backpack full of dirt along with him. Mercury had given him the most disdainful look he'd ever had the pleasure of experiencing.

"Don't condescend to me, dear." The woman was regaining her composure. "My intelligence is light-years ahead of yours."

"Then you'll be able to figure out how to reverse the freezing point depression before I trap you six feet under?" Mikai made a motion. The ice beneath the woman's feet cracked deafeningly as the earth beneath the skating rink buckled and tore up through the concrete.

Bertie had been pale before; now her face turned blue as she flinched backward.

But she summoned a smirk. "Perhaps you can stop me from making new ice, but I can still control what I've already made!"

She swept her hand out, and the hundreds of ice shards lying on the ground quivered into the air.

Mikai lunged in front of Sailor Moon. _Now, Mercury,_ he thought as the woman stepped backward into a swirling black vortex.

The ice shards, which had been hurtling toward himself and Sailor Moon abruptly reversed direction. They hurtled toward Tuxedo Mask, who now crouched contorted like a hunchback in the mountain of unconscious children. His eyes seared out from behind his mask, a blinding, burning gold; the air around them seemed to warp and waver.

"No! No!" Behind him Serena was screaming. "Tuxedo Mask!"

But Mercury's aim was true, and Darien seemed oblivious to the world, locked in his internal combat. As Mikai watched, shards of ice tore into his friend's face.

"_NO_!" Serena screamed.

Mikai heard a crack; he spun to see that she had wrested one leg free from the stalagmite of ice that had encased it.

He grabbed her by the shoulders, held her back.

"Stop, Serena," he said. "The youma are gone."

His use of her civilian name did not seem to faze her. "I don't care about the youma!" she nearly shouted at him. "Let me go – "

One side of her mouth could not keep up with the other; he looked over her shoulder and saw bone peeking through her back. His eyes went wide, and he transferred his grip from her shoulders to under her arms.

"Serena, he'll heal. The Golden Crystal will heal him. You know it will."

"What if it doesn't?" she cried, her eyes seemed crazed, and with her working arm she pushed at him. Even that strength was incredible; he found himself sliding backward. "Let me go to him – " The jewel in her tiara began to pulse, and when he looked at her eyes they burned into him.

"Okay." He acquiesced quickly. The realization that this girl was not only Serena, the sweet, benign child he had met at the garage but also Sailor Moon, killer of hundreds of youma.

"But let me take you to him. You're in no condition to walk."

Slinging her working arm around his neck, he held the rest of her as gently as he could, propped against him, her paralyzed leg dragging heavily along the ice as they walked. He felt the vertebrae protruding from her back chafe across his arm as they walked, too, and he began to wonder who had been injured more seriously, Darien or Serena.

As they drew closer to the grisly sight – the prone children, some of them bleeding and some of them looking like they weren't breathing; and Darien on his back, still as death, his tuxedo torn and a mask of golden sparks buzzing across his face like flies over carrion – Mikai wished that Mercury would give him a sign. Was her plan working? Or had they condemned Darien to life as a walking skull, with gaping sockets where his eyes should be?

"It's working."

The voice speaking directly into his ear shocked the hell out of him. He jerked and nearly dropped Serena.

"What is it?" said the blonde in worry. "Are you okay?"

But Mikai was listening to the voice in his ear, glancing around him to see where Mercury was.

"Nowhere near you, idiot. I put an earpiece into your ear. It's microscopic. More advanced technology than a Terran deserves. Don't even _contemplate_ taking it out and trying to duplicate it."

Mikai suppressed a grin, amused beyond words by all her grumbling because _it was working! She had said it was working!_

"Here." Mikai set Serena down next to Darien's body, no longer feeling as though he was setting her down beside a corpse.

She was already dragging herself closer to Darien with her working arm. "Thank you, Mikai." Her voice was tight. "Thank you so much."

Mikai wished that Mercury would tell him if Serena would heal. "Wait for him to wake up. I'll go call 911 and try to get the others out of their icy prisons."

It was a joke, but Serena must not have heard it, for she didn't laugh.

"Or it simply wasn't amusing," said Mercury's voice in her ear, and he grimaced as he turned around to head back onto the ice.

"Let me guess, you have the earpiece somehow rigged to detect my thought-waves and interpret them?" muttered Mikai, barely audibly.

"I don't need thought waves to interpret your predictable thoughts, Terran," returned Mercury. "Serena will be fine. In Senshi form her cells mitose rapidly when she's injured. An injury like that will take half a day to heal fully, but you won't be able to feel her vertebrae ten minutes from now."

L

The first thing he felt was stillness. Empty and quiet.

Then fire, burning behind his eyelids, as though his brain had decided that his eyeballs were marshmallows that they wanted to roast.

Then hands, resting on his face.

They were cool and soft. He fought upright, pressing their coolness closer against his face, gripping them to slide them up to his eyelids and submerge the burning in coolness. A sigh of relief left his lips.

There was a gasp from above him. Then a body hurled itself into him. The cool hands abandoned his eyes to knot around his neck, and against his throat there was a hot, wet face. Her cold nose pressed into his Adam's apple, and she was crying into his collarbone.

"You're okay! You're okay!"

Darien held her close, for he had not been able to hold Serena like this in an eternity. His eyes still burned, but he would not move her arms from around his neck for anything, even to quench the fire. He opened his eyes instead, hoping for the cold air to cool them –

A tremendous shock rocked through him.

"Serena." Some of her hair got caught in his lips.

"I was so scared – " She was still crying. "I thought the Golden Crystal might not be able to heal you – like when it couldn't fix your eyes – "

"Serena," he said again, and eagerly, almost roughly, he grabbed her chin and yanked her face up to his.

He could see her.

He stared and stared and stared and stared at her face. Her eyes were red and wet; her face was pink and wet; her teeth chattered behind her blue-tinged lips, and behind her Senshi glamour he could see the faint spiderweb of silver scars.

His eyeballs gasped for lubrication; he ignored them and kept gazing. A hand lifted to her face, pulled the mask from her face so that he could look at her eyes unimpeded.

"Darien." Her whisper trembled like her gloved hands that had slid down to grip his collar. "You can…"

Reflected in her wide black pupils beneath her tiara he saw his eyes reflected in hers, shining at her.

"I can see," he finished her sentence, and he did not even care that his voice was an unmanly whisper.

Sailor Moon let out a cry and threw her arms around him all over again, crying happiness into his neck. But he would have none of it; she was not taking her face away from him after he was able to see it, to watch it as much as he wanted – he pulled away from her and held her face in his hands, pushing tangled, bloodied hair from her forehead and her ears and watching her golden curls cling to his fingers.

Golden curls…clinging to his fingers…

Memory slammed into him.

_"I just wanted you to know that… I love you."_

Elysion…her golden hair curtaining him…the salty smell of her tears… His fingers dragged down her shoulder blade and curled into a fist.

"Darien?" Alarm tightened her grip on his vest.

His fingers unclenched, slowly. Joy was spreading through him, loosening his muscles.

"Shhh, Odango," he murmured. He brushed a hand over her precious, precious head and pressed it closer to him. "I'm having a revelation."

She loved him.

She _loved _him.

_She_ loved _him!_

The realization was exploding inside him like millions of butterflies bursting from their cocoons all at once. A thousand touches, a million words, an infinity of looks replayed themselves in his mind, all of them alchemized from painful, meaningless into affectionate, treasured – _she loved him._

He kept returning to the thought, did not want to let it out of its sight, lest it disappear – _she loved him_. His hands ran down her face again, and he pulled back to stare at her, reality shaking around him all over again – s_he loved him_. He wanted to lean down and tell her the same thing, his lips against hers as he whispered it so that not one drop, not one iota of his feelings would be lost to the air but all of it poured into her.

But he forced himself to think, forced himself to close his eyes, to deprive himself of her face, in order to trace the trail of bread crumbs that had led to this paradise before he gobbled up his only way back to safety only to discover that the whole revelation was just a mirage, a dream.

There was the princess, there was Rini… but there was Serena, and he had not dreamed that she told him she loved him. He had forgotten it until now, but he had dreamed it, not unless he had dreamed the whole horrible experience of his body mutating around him. And his hearing had been too acute that day, his mind too alert, for him to have misheard her…

She loved him, and that was all the knowledge he needed for every other detail to fall into perfect place. He would tell the princess that he would help but not love her; with Serena's selfless presence near him, beside him, he would never fall to Chaos's side.

The butterflies swooped inside him all over again, a vibrant flurry of color and hope.

Then a dark cloud fell over it all as one more thought occurred to him.

He pushed his eyes open and met Serena's.

Inside him, as though from behind a thick, thick door, he could hear Endymion's imperious command that he just reach into her mind to find the answer he sought.

But the command was muffled, Darien found, it was easy to push away and ignore, because he still felt hope, he felt confidence, because Serena would not have said she loved him only to flutter on to someone else.

But he wet his lips and said, "Serena."

She seemed to sense the gravity of the question that perched atop his tongue; she watched him seriously with her blue, blue eyes. He had forgotten how intently she could look at him, how much she could make him feel as though she was reading his thoughts across his face.

"Are you still dating Haruka?"

A strange sound escaped her. Her hands fell from his collar, and he stared at her bangs, for she had lowered her head.

But before the door could begin to swing open, her head shook, slowly, bangs brushing his collar.

Darien smoothed her hair and resisted the urge to grin in goofy relief. He wanted to say, 'I should be sorry, but I'm not,' but he dared not. Not yet.

Instead, he kept smoothing her hair, telling her with his touch what he dared not with his words – _I love you._

L

Through the microscopic earpiece clinging to his eardrum, Mercury's voice said, "Well."

"Go ahead," said Mikai, squatting beside the cube of ice that contained Asanuma. His voice was casual, but inside his heart had finally begun to stop whirling as fast as a centrifuge. "Say I told you so."

"And stoop to your level?" said Mercury's voice. "I think not."

Mikai rapped the ice with his knuckles, judging its thickness. Asanuma's eyes had fluttered shut just a moment ago; he was out of air. "Then can you please melt this thing? He's going to sustain brain damage."

"Too late for that," said Mercury dryly, but as he watched, the ice collapsed with a splash into a puddle of water. Asanuma crashed to the floor, his armor clanging against the ice of the rink. He lay still-face-down in the puddle.

Mikai rolled him over and began to pump on his chest. With each pump, a little more apprehension and reluctance spurted into his veins – a) Asanuma wasn't waking up, which was bad, b) Mikai was going to have to give him CPR, which he was pretty sure neither of them wanted.

Then a voice demanded from behind him, "What happened?" and Darien dropped to his knees next to Mikai.

Mikai looked up at his friend, noting his eyes, back to normal except for gold irises instead of blue. "He's going to need CPR – "

Darien made a motion with his hand, like a conductor signaling a crescendo. Water spurted suddenly from Asanuma's nose and mouth, and he jerked up, spluttering.

"I'll go start on Lita and Motoki," said Sailor Moon when she saw that Asanuma was okay, and clattered across the ice.

Darien leaned forward and began to pound the blonde on the back. After a second, weakly, Asanuma batted his hand away. "Turning my back purple isn't going to get the water out of my chest, stupid," he coughed.

"Well, get over it so you can come melt everyone else out of the ice," said Darien, and his words were bossy, but his voice was almost jubilant. Mikai stared at him, and from the corner of his eye saw Asanuma doing the same.

Then Asanuma gasped. "Darien! Your – "

"I know," said Darien, grinning. He grabbed Asanuma and hauled him to his feet. "Come on, you have to melt Motoki out of the ice before Serena mistakes him for a popsicle and tries to eat him."

Asanuma began to laugh and cough at the same time.

Darien looked back over his shoulder at Mikai. "Don't think saving our butts gets you out of an interrogation."

Mikai shrugged, a grin on his face because the one on Darien's face was just so contagious. His friend looked as though he had just downed a bottle of ambrosia.

"Whatever you say, man," he said. "Whatever you say."

L

No one had died. Twenty elementary schoolers and three high schoolers were hospitalized with acute exhaustion. Dozens more were checked out and sent home with strict orders of bed rest. Serena scolded Buji for running out into the middle of a youma battle; Mikai wrapped up his precious bootleg of the newest Bleach movie and left it on the little boy's doorstep.

The EMTs who had come with the ambulance expressed the expected astonishment and disbelief at the state of Darien's eyes, for everyone had heard of the boy blinded in a youma attack. But it was Christmas Eve, and they told him that if he didn't want to go to the hospital to be checked out, that was his incentive.

"Damn straight," said Motoki, shooting a tired but luminous grin at his friend. Lita fussed with his arm again, although Darien had already healed the broken bone with the Golden Crystal.

Rini sat beside Asanuma. Serena had let her out of her SubSpace pocket before she detransformed and told her what all had happened. And she should be happy, she supposed, for Darien to have gotten his sight back, but…

The urge to lean against Asanuma's shoulder was difficult to resist. She dug her elbows into her knees instead, resting her face on her hands, wanting to go home. But she didn't even know where home was anymore.

"Hey, Rini."

_Him_.

"What, Buji-senpai?"

His ridiculous Power Ranger sneakers stopped in her line of vision. "Buji-_senpai_?" he demanded.

She lifted her head to glare at his indignant face. "That's what you wanted me to call you, isn't it? You get your wish. Merry Christmas."

Buji returned her glare. "I changed my mind!"

"Too late!" Rini retorted. "Buji-senpai, Buji-senpai, Buji-_senpai_!"

Everyone was turning around to look at them by now. Rini turned her head away from their curious eyes, propping her face on her hands again.

"Hmph." Something was shoved into her lap, between her arms. "Merry Christmas to you too, _Scrooge_."

Rini stared down at the clumsily-wrapped package in her lap, then up at Buji sliding a little clumsily across the ice, into his mother's waiting arms. She met Mayuko-san's eyes and felt suddenly ashamed…

She looked back down at the present in her lap

…and yet also very warm inside.

L

"I thought you might be here." Mikai locked his apartment door behind him, dropping his keys on the counter.

She tilted her head back, watching him upside-down from where she sat on the sofa. "I need to make sure that you aren't planning to tell our little prince about me."

"What, and have to share you?" Mikai grinned at her glare, then sat down on the couch next to her. She got up and moved to the armchair. He smiled again. "Of course not. A deal's a deal."

"And a Terran's a Terran," retorted Mercury.

Mikai sighed. Then he shifted, leaned forward to pick up the white- and blue-wrapped box on the coffee table. "I got you something."

Mercury lifted her eyebrow at him.

"Actually, it's not for you," Mikai corrected himself. "It's for Ami."

"Ami," repeated Mercury. A small smile curved her lips. "Very well. Can _I _open it?"

"I'd prefer if you let Ami out to do it…" Mikai trailed off.

"It's not a matter of letting Ami out," said Mercury cryptically. She slid a finger beneath the wrapping paper and tore it open in the same swift movement a butcher might use to slit open a cow.

But the darkening of her eyes was not butcher-like in the least. He watched her lift the chess set and turn it around, examining the box.

"Do you like it?" he asked quietly.

She lifted her eyes to him. They were wet, not frozen.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Then her eyes bleached light again, and it was Mercury's sardonic expression twisting the features.

Mikai smiled at her, showing his teeth. "Mercury, dear, are you going to make me do to you what you did to Darien?"

Mercury did not return his smile. "I told you. It's not a matter of letting her out."

L

It was still very difficult to believe that he was not dreaming. That he was not still in the midst of those dreams that had consumed him as he lay in the hospital bed, gripped in delusions of Serena and of family and of happiness.

To convince himself he looked at her again, at her bright hair rippling in curly tangles across her pillow, at her pale foot that poked from beneath her stars- and moons-spattered blanket, at her tiny – had it always been so small? – hand twitching as she dreamt.

He leaned forward on the tree branch to drink in more, and the blanket that she had tucked around him slipped from his shoulders, made an escape for the ground. He frowned indignantly; he would not let it get dirty on the ground, that precious blanket that Serena had tucked around him while she smiled so softly and given him silent permission with her eyes to stay in her tree because neither of them wanted the other out of reach yet. Not that precious blanket.

His eyes snapped down, located the blanket, reveling in the act of being able to see it, and snatched it. The rapid movement made the branch he was on shake, made its leaves rustle.

In the corner of his eye, gold moved. He whipped his head back around toward Serena's window and watched her slide from beneath her blanket, watched her walk toward the window. She shivered in the freezing night air that had been let in by the window that she had insisted on keeping open a crack.

She stopped there, in front of her window seat, eyeing him with an expression that managed to glow and to be exasperated at the same time, and then she held out her arms.

He leaned forward and picked her up, pulling her onto the tree branch and wrapping her in the blanket. Not once did he look away from her face. It was a work of filigreed silver in the moonlight; her eyes, her lips, the lines across her face all shimmered up at him.

"You're going to wake Rini up." The shapes that her lips made as she whispered were fascinating. Intricate. He knew suddenly why Serena's limbs were so clumsy. All her grace had gone to her lips.

"It's almost morning anyway, Odango," he said, shifting his gaze to her eyes. "And it's Christmas. Sammy'll be waking the whole house up any second now anyway."

And when he did, Serena would have to go downstairs with her family, would have to leave him, but he was too happy for that thought to be much more than a faint wisp of cloud in a dazzling blue sky. Even Endymion seemed as far away from him now as the most distant star in the sky; Darien could still barely even feel the presence inside him, as though his happiness was a meters-thick steel wall between them.

A happy sigh escaped the graceful lips next to his shoulder. "Merry Christmas, Darien."

He had been following the arcs of moonlight across the curls that clung around her ears beneath the blanket that hooded her head, instead of watching her face, so that he missed the opportunity to watch again the movement of her lips. He smiled, thinking of something to say so that she would speak again.

But then she bumped his arm with her head, and the action seemed infinitely more precious to him than the movement of her lips.

"You got some Christmas gift, huh?" she murmured against his arm.

He lowered his face, just a breath above her head. "The best."

For a while they sat there, Darien content – enthralled – merely to stare at her hands clutching the blanket around her as her exhalations seeped through his sleeve to his skin beneath.

Then the silent billowing of her golden hair reminded him.

"Oh," he said, and shifted on the tree branch, leaning into her for a second as he slipped a hand into the pocket of his vest. "I have your present."

The necklace's delicate chain fell lightly against his leg as he closed his fingers around the locket.

"Oh!" said Serena, and he watched her snap her face up to his. "I have yours, it's – "

"Right here," he finished for her, meeting her eyes with his with an impact that made them both fall silent. The exchange of his eyes with hers felt almost intimate; goosebumps stroked his neck.

"Darien," she began, but he took her hand and poured the locket and its delicate chain into her palm.

She fell silent again and looked down at it, at his palms cupping hers.

"I made it gold," said Darien; suddenly the silence had become constricting. Suppose she didn't like it? "It was silver, I can change it back if you want – "

"No – " Her voice broke, and he looked at her in alarm.

"Serena – "

She lifted her chin, swiped at the tears that trickled fast from her eyes. "I'm just so happy." Her voice broke again. "It doesn't seem like – it's so beautiful, and – Darien, what if this is just a dream?"

Darien took the locket back from her, pushed the blanket from around her face, and fastened the necklace around her neck. Gold and star-shaped, the locket matched her hair exactly, just as he had intended it. "I thought the same thing."

She stared up at him, wide-eyed. "Then how do you know?"

He put his forehead to hers. "Because we never have dreams this happy, Odango."

From the half-sob, half-laugh that escaped her, he knew he had convinced her. Her eyes closed, and he watched her eyelids.

"Darien?" She opened her eyes and blinked at him.

He blinked back, smiling. "Mmm?"

She giggled. "Spend Christmas with us."

A pause. He pulled back. "Your dad would kill me."

"My mom said I could ask."

"Your dad would still kill me."

"My mom knows how to handle my dad, Darien!" Her voice and flushed cheeks were indignant.

"Yeah, but _I _don't know how to handle your dad."

"Darieeeeen…. _Pleeeeeeaaase_?"

Had he thought being able to see her again was a good thing? He'd forgotten the fearsome power of her puppy dog eyes. "Fine."

"Yes! It'll be fun, I promise!" She bounced on the branch, and the leaves shook again.

He tried to keep his voice dour, but he couldn't help but grin at her. "Well, just don't get too happy yet."

She paused, looked at him with a stab of apprehension in her eyes that made him regret joking. "Why?"

"Well." Darien leaned back, crossing his legs. "Now that I can see, this means you won't be getting my car after all."

Serena glared at him, clearly not amused. "You're talking about your CAR? You scared me, you jerkwad! I thought it was something horrible, like the world ending in a month!" She aimed a kick at his chins.

Which wasn't the best idea considering she was rather precariously perched on a tree branch several meters above the ground.

Darien saw her beginning to tumble backward before she realized it herself. Even as her eyes began to widen, he had caught her under the arms.

Setting her upright on the branch, he shook his head at her in exasperation.

She blinked up at him for a moment before flashing him a grin.

Then, "So, you were really going to give me your car?"

"Not anymore."

She tilted her head. "Are you _suuuure_?"

Darien grinned at her. "Yup. Maybe you can ask Santa for one of your own."

"Okay." Serena grinned, and in the space of Darien blinking suddenly she had scrambled onto his knee. "Santa, can I please please please PLEASE have Darien's car?"

"Ser – that's not what I meant!" Darien sputtered.

Serena batted her eyelashes up at him evilly from beneath her hood of blanket. "You _said _to ask Santa – "

Darien lifted an arm. She broke off, her eyes following his hand.

He reached toward her face –

And pulled the blanket the rest of the way over her face.

"DARIEN!"

L

A/N: All I want for Christmas…..is revieeeeeeewwwwwwws!


	24. Chapter 24

A/N: HUGE, VERY IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE.

Yet again, I owe you all a tremendous apology. The chapter 23 which you all read was not the correct draft and was posted by mistake. I beg you all forget that any of the events of that chapter – including (wince) Darien's recovered sight and his subsequent realization of Serena's love for him – ever happened.

T-T…

…just kidding! That was the right draft of the chapter. However, Jade and I agreed that an opportunity such as this to trick all you lovely readers must not be passed by. You should expect the same treatment when the chapter in which the princess's identity is revealed comes out. Let's see, if I start writing for sixteen hours every day beginning now, I should be able to do that just in time for April Fools' Day in 2018….

In all seriousness now, sorry for the long wait. The further we get into the story, the closer we get to very important stuff, and I'm terrified of doing a mediocre job on events and characters that we've been waiting for since Season 1. I really want to be able to look back on the story and be proud of it, you know?

**Important announcement**: an STC website is now up at

h t t p : / / s i t e s . g o o g l e . c o m / s i t e/s u b j e c t to c h a n g e s a i l o r m o o n f i c /

(I put spaces in so ffdotnet wouldn't delete it, so you'll have to type it in, sorry.)

Nearly all of EightofSwords' works will be posted there along with a new series, _Your Romantic Interest,_and STC deleted/alternate scenes, character sketches and various other special features. Please check it out!

Moving on, there are 2 additions to the STC playlist: Within Temptation's _The Truth Beneath the Rose_ and Placebo's _A Song to Say Goodbye_are so incredibly well-suited to Sailor Moon in general and STC in particular that I nearly died of happiness. Oh, and Serenity-hime being back almost made me die of happiness, too!

Another thing that makes me nearly die of happiness quite frequently is my awesome friend Jade-Eye. You rock like an Onyx, Jade!

Disclaimer: Here's something that DOESN'T make me die of happiness – I don't own Sailor Moon. Or any of the myriad other copyrighted works mentioned within this chapter.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Trapped Ones

L

Lita awoke to the sound of soft breathing. Her eyeballs felt tight and stretched; she rolled over to squint at the clock on Lizzie's nightstand and saw that it was seven o'clock. She must have finally fallen asleep sometime after three.

She sat up beneath the nest of blankets that Mrs. Furuhata had made for her and for a moment, debated whether she could sneak out of the house while everyone was still sleeping off the previous Christmas Day.

Then the smell of cooking batter and the sound of sizzling grease penetrated her awareness. Someone was in the kitchen, someone who would notice if she left.

Not that she should even have contemplated leaving, anyway. What would that have looked like?

_Like you're the selfish human being that you are._

She bunched her pillow between her fists, looked up at Motoki's fourteen year-old sister's face. Lizzie's face was just visible above her cocoon of blankets, her face still shiny from the tears that had streaked it the night before.

Last night, no sooner had she and Lizzie come into Lizzie's bedroom from a monstrous Christmas dinner and a game of Clue than the girl had burst into tears. Lita would have been shocked if she hadn't already sensed the strange weight pervading the house, like a chained phantom lurking among them as they ate gingerbread and sang carols and opened presents.

Still…she had never expected _this_.

There were a lot of things she hadn't expected.

She couldn't sit here. The images were eating away at her, Serena crying in Darien's lap, the bone of her spine visible through the back of her fuku, Motoki gazing at his father as he smiled in his armchair, the bones of his skull in sharp relief beneath his thin, jaundiced skin.

She stood up. Pulled her robe over her green flannel pajamas. Closed Lizzie's bedroom door silently behind her and crept silently downstairs to the kitchen.

"Why, good morning, Lita-san!"

Furuhata-san's voice was booming as always, but a weaker note trembled inside it, like a vein of black running through white marble. He stood in front of the stove, wearing an apron over a baggy sweatshirt that Lita recognized as one of Motoki's.

The full gravity of Furuhata-san's sickness hit her all over again with small insistent fists. How far gone was Motoki's barrel-chested father if even a sweatshirt belonging to his beanpole son looked baggy on him?

She murmured a reply: "Good morning, Furuhata-san."

"Would you come man the waffle maker for me?" His voice wasn't a boom any longer. He spoke quietly, as though he knew now that she knew and didn't feel like he had to hide his weakness anymore.

Lita's eyes flicked to the waffle maker sitting on the counter, a faint wisp of steam crawling slowly from beneath it. This was the same man, she reminded herself, who had given her a job at the arcade with a broad, welcoming smile; the same man who only a few months ago had been the picture of health, robust, taller even than Motoki, with biceps as big as the grapefruits that he liked to eat for breakfast.

But the same man who had always been able to make Motoki laugh with a single word had been able yesterday to make Motoki cry with a single coughing fit. Lita had seen the tears before her boyfriend turned toward the Christmas tree and swiped them quickly away. Maybe Furuhata-san was the one with the cancer inside him, but he had become a cancer to his family. He was leeching away their happiness.

Lita knew it was irrational, knew that Furuhata-san's brain tumor wasn't his fault. But blameless or not, she thought, it would be easier for everyone involved if his family could love him less. This pain, running close to the surface beneath the atmosphere of the house like blood beneath bruised skin, could be avoided. If only they would distance themselves…

"Oh." Furuhata-san's low voice drew Lita from her thoughts. She looked up at him, realized with a wince that she hadn't answered his request. "You probably want to go wake up Toki, right?" He winked at her with his exhaustion-darkened eyes. "Go ahead, I've got the waffles."

_If you loved him, you wouldn't do this to him_.

"No, that's okay!" Lita forced herself to laugh and went to the waffle maker, easing it open. "I was just sleepy. Sorry, Furuhata-san."

The waffle maker's interior had been well-greased. The waffle inside slid easily away from the grooves when she touched it with the fork.

_If you loved him, you would push him away so he won't miss you._

"So, Lita. Do you always wake up so early?"

Lita poured in more batter. "Uh-huh. And you, Furuhata-san?"

"Yep. Gotta, to open the cafe in time for all those businessmen who want their coffee." He turned from the bacon, winked at Lita again. "Motoki's gonna have to work on that, though. He likes to sleep in."

The waffle maker behind Lita beeped. She turned around to take the waffle out.

"Yep, he used to be as bad as Serena," continued Furuhata-san quietly behind her. She could barely hear him over the hiss of the batter hitting the hot Teflon and the bacon sizzling on the stove. She wondered if she was supposed to make a sound of acknowledgement or if he was talking to himself. "And Lizzie still is. That's why we made them start working at the arcade. For every ten minutes they were late to school they'd have to work an hour shift at the arcade because we'd end up having to drive them to school…"

There was a sound, something landing in the bacon pan and sizzling.

Lita knew what tears hitting a hot pan sounded like. She was quiet, watching the timer on the waffle maker count down.

As the sound of burning bacon began to reach her nose, she heard the sound of keys in a lock. She spun, heard Furuhata-san straighten behind her.

Motoki pushed open the door that led from the backyard into the kitchen. His eyes flicked up from his keys, met hers.

"Hey," he said, a grin unfurling on his face. Then his grin froze in mid-furl. Quickly, Lita tried to iron her face, but she saw from the flinch of his eyes that it was too late. He already knew that she knew.

His eyes flicked past her. "Hey, Dad – "  
"Where's my newspaper, Motoki!" Furuhata-san brandished his spatula behind him without turning around from the stove. "You know your mother and I always look at the after-Christmas sales! Lita, go with the boy and make sure he doesn't get lost on the way to the newspaper stand, will you?"

"Yes, sir!" With false bravado in her voice, Lita caught Motoki by the jacketed arm and hauled him back out the door.

Motoki followed her down the back stairs, silently. She glanced back up at him, saw from the skin bleached white around his mouth that he was biting his lip very hard. When they reached the bottom of the stairs he stopped and ground his knuckles into his forehead with a harsh breath. Lita reached for him –

"Look, I'm sorry," came from between his white lips, "but you should probably go home."

She froze.

"I'm going to – I'm gonna be – " An exhalation. "I really don't want to hurt you, Lita."

The image of the waffle, prodded from the Teflon by the fork, filled her mind. _Motoki knows how to cook_, Lita remembered. Motoki knew as well as she did how to make sure that the waffles slid off the pan without tearing.

"Shit," she said. "Toki, I love you. Okay? Don't do this – "

"Lita." He was still grinding his hands into his forehead, but he had lifted his face to look up at her from beneath them, his eyes dark and wet beneath his tousled bangs. "I love you, too. But that's why I don't want you to waste your time on me when – "

"Waste my time on you?" Lita echoed, fury crackling through her. "The only time I spend with you that's a waste is when I'm listening to you say something as stupid as the idea that being with you is a waste of time – "

"And if I die?" Motoki bellowed. Lita fell a step back; her shoulder blades hit the wall; she felt trapped and she shoved away from it angrily, but it could not free her from the choking bars within which his words were trapping her. "Cancer's genetic, Lita! I'll probably get it too. So you want me to waste your time knowing full well that twenty-five years from now I'll probably die and leave you alone?"

"That's stupid!" Lita shouted back at him, nearly snarling, she was so panicked by the cage in which her own thoughts had trapped her. "Darien has the Golden Crystal to heal you – "

"Darien's magic crystal couldn't do anything for my dad!" Motoki exploded.

A pause stretched out, as they both breathed raggedly, glaring at each other, hazel on green.

Then, lowering his hands, Motoki said, more calmly but with pain raging beneath his words nonetheless, "I'm not going to gamble your future on that chance."

"YOU're not going to gamble MY future?" Lita's hands shot out and seized handfuls of his jacket. He stumbled forward in her grip, though his angry eyes didn't leave hers. "Damn straight you're not, because it's MY future! And I'll do whatever the hell I want with it, even if that means getting left alone when you die of cancer, which you're NOT GOING TO DO!"

She shook him one last time, but he wasn't rigid anymore. He let her shake him.

Brows knit, she stared at him, only to see her surprise mirrored on his wan face.

She loosened her hold. "What?"

Motoki loosened his own hold on her wrists. He shook his head. There was a dead brown leaf in his hair. "I don't understand."

"Don't understand what?" demanded Lita, still on the offensive. "I like you, and I'm not gonna break up with you just because you think you won't be here a million years from now. If you wanna break up with me because you have a secret burning passion for Asanuma, then maybe I'll consider it. But not because of something stupid like this."

The confused sigh that gusted from Motoki's lips blew across Lita's cold face. "I thought this was what you'd want."

"Want?" echoed Lita again. "To break up with you?"

"You don't think that Darien should be with Serena now because he won't be with her in the future." He looked at her, eyes searching. "You don't think he should waste her life like that. I thought…"

Lita's hands slid from Motoki's coat.

"That's," she began blankly. "That's…"

_The same_.

She had believed that Darien should stay away from Serena to save Serena pain. That Furuhata-san should stay away from Motoki to save Motoki pain. But when Motoki had tried to do the same to her –

Her hand crept up to her chest, to the breathless terror that slammed there in a frantic frenzy, a bird trapped with a cat, beating at the bars to get out.

She tried to croak denial, to say that Darien didn't really love Serena like she loved Motoki, that Endymion, in the past, had chosen the princess over Serena, and Darien was Endymion. But her mind swept the argument from her like dishes shoved violently off a table; threw down instead the memories of those terrifying days when she felt herself being swallowed by that green aura that was not her. Threw down memories of the times that she had watched the tenderness with which Darien pushed back Serena's hair or with which Serena had leaned over his shoulders. Threw down the jealousy that she had felt when she watched them and wondered if she would ever know anything as true as that love.

_The same_, said her mind again quietly.

Her fingers dug into her bangs. "Damn it."

"Lita, what is it?" Motoki's fingers brushed her jaw.

She let him pull her face up to look at him.

"I was wrong."

His forehead dented even more deeply. "What?"

Lita turned her head to the side, the friction between her cheek and his hand a faint trail of warmth. "I don't think Darien and Serena should have to stay apart because of that." She turned her head back again, eyes fierce. "And we shouldn't either."

A soft, heartbreaking smile curved illuminated Motoki's face. It made her want to break into tears.

"Thank you."

Lita turned away. She had been stewing with resentment bordering on hatred for his father and his best friend, and he was thanking her. She padded toward the driveway. "C'mon, let's go get that newspaper so you can get back."

Motoki caught up to her on the sidewalk. Perhaps he sensed her guilt – or at least her discomfort – for he said, "You know my dad probably just wanted us out of the house so he could eat all the bacon before we came back."

Lita let herself be comforted. Because, like Darien and Furuhata-san who wanted to soak up all the time they could with the ones they loved, she was selfish. "Maybe I played along because I wanted to spend time with you."

Then she cocked a brow and speared him on a green-eyed glance. "That was before I know you were trying to dump me, of course."

Motoki made the obligatory wince. Then he studied her.

Lita lifted her chin and met his look archly.

"You know you're wearing your pajamas and a bathrobe."

Now she winced. "Uh – "

Motoki heaved a great sigh. "I guess I have no choice but to share my jacket with you."

Lita's brows rose. "Share?"

"Well, I'm not going to give you the whole thing and catch pneumonia," said Motoki indignantly as he shrugged off his jacket and put one side around her shoulders, keeping the other around his. "Besides, haven't you ever heard that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts? We'll be warmer this way."

"You're so full of it," said Lita, sliding her arm around his waist. "Motoki?"

He put his arm around her waist and looked at her. His eyes were bright in the same way that Serena's often were, a joyful light magnified by a wet film of sorrow. "Yeah?"

"I'll help."

He didn't ask what she meant. Didn't ask how she was going to help. Just pressed his lips together tightly and nodded as he pressed his face against her hair.

Lita hugged him closer as she felt his tears hot and wet running down her temple and his chest shaking within her arms.

L

"Okay, time to clean up the mess in the living room!" Ikuko came into the living room brandishing a garbage bag. "Any presents I find still lying around in here after ten o'clock are going straight to the donations box!"

"Aw, Mom," groaned Sammy from where he sprawled on the couch with one of his new video games. "Give us a break, Christmas was only yesterday! Right, Rini?"

Rini looked up from her CLAMP art book.

"Young man, I'm not asking you to work all day," scolded Ikuko. "I just want you to move your presents to your room and help me pick up the wrapping paper so I can vacuum. Roaches don't take a break for Christmas, you know!"

Sammy sighed and rolled off the couch. He began plucking his video games, sweaters, and gift cards from where they were scattered on the floor amidst the husks of wrapping paper.

Rini set down her art book and followed suit, though hesitantly. The Tsukinos hadn't skimped at all in buying her presents; in fact, she was rather sure that she'd received more expensive gifts than anyone in the family except Sammy. A stack of manga, a lot of hardcover books, two whole anime series on DVD, gift cards, and – from Lita – a collection of plushies whose members included Sailor Jupiter, Sailor Moon (of course), and Inuyasha.

Already she had been acutely aware of the advantage she was taking of the Tsukinos by living with them – moreover, the injustice she was committing against them by deliberately deceiving them into granting her hospitality.

The appearance of her own father at the Tsukinos' and his participation in their Christmas celebration had intensified her feeling of being a parasitic outsider. When she was the only dour dark spot amidst the Tsukinos' bright cheery presences, she could pretend that she belonged to them, however falsely. But with her father present, nearly as quiet and awkward among them as she was, there was no pretending that she belonged with Serena's family. Like blots of ink, she and her father had coalesced, obvious and impenetrable, to the Tsukinos' brighter pigments. It was clear that she belonged to _him_.

But what bothered her most was her acute, inescapable awareness – as the Tsukinos excitedly handed her the presents that they had chosen for her, and then produced from somewhere presents for Darien, too – that their daughter was going to die in the near future for the sake of one of the two people they were currently treating so kindly.

_Your daughter's going to die because of us_, she almost told Ikuko-san as she fussed away Rini's insistence that they shouldn't have bought her such expensive gifts. She had nearly cried, and they had thought it was from happiness. _You should hate me!_

"Rini? Do you need help with those, honey?"

Starting, Rini scooped up her plethora of gifts. "No! No, Ikuko-san. I have them, thank you. Do you want me to get the vacuum?"

"Actually," said Ikuko as Sammy came back into the room, his arms empty and an armless gingerbread man in his mouth, "Could you find Serena? She needs to pick up her gifts too, but she's probably hiding somewhere with one of her new manga. She usually does that the morning after Christmas to get out of doing chores."

Sammy snorted around his cookie. "Remember the time she forgot Dad had a meeting and hid in his backseat?" He grinned at Rini. "She fell asleep and no one knew where she was until she woke up when Dad picked up his assistants for the carpool. They saw her in her Rudolph pajamas!"

Rini grinned despite herself. "How old was she?"

"It was last year!" Sammy burst into laughter all over again, choking on his cookie.

Placidly, Ikuko patted her son on the back as he coughed. "Yes, well, that's our Serena. Think you can find her for me, Rini?"

"Yes, ma'am." Rini turned and headed up the stairs with her armful of presents, the smile evaporating slowly from her lips, for she knew that Serena had broken tradition this year. She wasn't hiding anywhere, unless being sprawled across her bed with her blanket half kicked off counted as hiding.

Rini's feet slowed slightly in their climb up the stairs. She wasn't sure that she wanted to wake Serena up. The blonde girl was obviously exhausted; she hadn't even woken up in the middle of the night to sneak to the kitchen for a glass of water the way she usually did.

Plus, she knew, Serena hadn't slept since the night before the Christmas school festival. Rini knew because she had lain awake for a long time, feigning sleep with both her aura and her body, as she listened to Serena and Darien in the tree murmuring quietly to each other all night once they had gotten back from the festival.

What Rini didn't want to admit to herself was that disturbing Serena's sleep wasn't the real reason she didn't want to wake up Serena.

As she stood in front of Serena's door, deliberating, it swung open.

And Serena tripped over her.

"Oh my gosh!" she exclaimed, crawling quickly backward off of Rini. She grabbed Rini by the shoulders to pull her up into a sitting position. "Rini! Are you okay, sweetheart?"

It was exactly the sort of thing that Serena would have said if the wish that Rini had nearly posted to Santa-Darien had come true. Hot water stung her eyes again.

"Rini? What's wrong?"

Rini mashed her lips together and shook her head. But the fear was too strong. She wrapped her arms around Serena's waist and burrowed into her lap with the ridiculous, childish hope that if she held on tight enough, she could keep that horrible future from tearing Serena away.

L

"Well! Was she in a good hiding spot?" Ikuko smiled across the room at Serena and Rini as they came down the stairs. "Are you ready to work?"

Absently, Serena made the reluctant face that she knew her mother would be expecting. She watched Rini walk across the living room and begin picking up stray bits of ribbon and gift bows. It was safe to say that walking into a resurrected Sailor Venus on the sidewalk would have shocked Serena less than Rini climbing into her lap and putting her arms around Serena as she had just a few minutes ago. Especially considering yesterday and the day before…

Serena shook her head and looked at her mother. "Mooooom! Do we _have_ to?"

"Well, not if you don't want your presents," said Ikuko matter-of-factly.

Serena gasped and dove for the carpet, stretching herself over the collection of manga and DVDs that she'd received. "You can't take them!"

"That's what I thought." Ikuko twirled her feather duster. "Take them up to your room, then, and come help clean like everyone else."

Serena gathered up her presents and dashed them up to her room, then thumped back down the stairs. "You know, Mom, I haven't eaten breakfast yet, I think I might faint if I start working – "

"Mm-hmm." Ikuko leaned down, picking up a large half-crumpled ball of shiny green wrapping paper – out of which something small and dark fell. "Oh, my, what's this?" She stooped and picked it up. "Oh, dear – Serena!"

Serena traded confused looks with Sammy and Rini. Then she pointed at her brother. "Sammy did it!"

"What?" blurted Sammy. "No way, Mom, it was Serena – "

"Guilty consciences much?" said Rini, peering at the shape in Ikuko's hands, then looking at them both. "It's Shields-san's wallet."

"Mm-hmm," said Ikuko. "He must have dropped it here yesterday, unless the two of you are confessing to being pickpockets?"

Sammy snorted. "Why would I steal Darien's wallet? Probably the only thing in it is a copy of the periodic table."

Serena bopped him upside the head. "Yeah, because your Transformers' Fan Club identification card is so much cooler."

"Enough!" scolded Ikuko. "Serena, I think he might be needing his driver's license, so why don't you take this to him? Oh, and let me put together a package of leftovers for you to take him while you're there. The poor dear looked so thin yesterday that a wind might blow him away." She disappeared into the kitchen.

"Wait!" Serena hastily followed her mother into the kitchen. "Mom – I mean – um – I'm reeeaally busy today, I don't know if I – "

Ikuko paused in her carving of the remaining Christmas turkey and turned around. The carving knife glinted in her hand. "Serena Tsukino. You are going to take Darien his wallet."

Serena gulped. "But Mom – my chores, you know – I have to do them – "

"We'll worry about your chores later." Ikuko turned back to the turkey.

"Whoah, no chores?" exclaimed Sammy, nearly dropping the pan he was scrubbing. He looked at Serena eagerly. "Can _I_take Darien his wallet?"

L

Darien awoke to the sound of his phone ringing.

He rolled over – and toppled to the floor.

A disgruntled mutter left his lips, but he had barely noticed the impact. Mostly he was angry because he was certain that he had just been having the best dream. He had been able to see Serena, and she had hugged him and stroked his hair and let him stroke hers and worn the Christmas present he had gotten her all Christmas Day long –

The phone rang again.

He opened his eyes.

Oh.

_Oh_.

It wasn't a dream.

The phone rang again.

He lunged to his feet, scrambling over the bed sheets now tangled on the floor, through his door, over his leather couch – he caught a glimpse of an array of half-full glasses left on the coffee table; _that_ was why he never let people eat in his living room – and snatched the phone on the kitchen counter.

"Hello?" His voice was breathless. But he didn't care, it wasn't as though Serena would blame him for being excited that he'd woken up able to see, not to mention cushioned by the memories of the day before –

"Is this Mr. Shields?"

– except that this cold voice definitely wasn't Serena's.

"Yes," said Darien, his tone abruptly cooler. "What do you need, Dr. Tomoe?"  
"Good morning, Darien. I trust you had an enjoyable holiday? I hear you received quite the gift."

How had he found out? "Yes."

Dr. Tomoe said nothing on the other end of the line, undoubtedly expecting Darien to elaborate.

When he didn't, Tomoe spoke again. "Well, I know it's only the day after Christmas, but it's imperative that you come in so that we can run some tests. Not to cast a shadow over your happiness, but it may be, however unlikely, that recovering your sight is a symptom of a worsening in your condition – "

"How long will it take?" Darien interrupted.

"Thirty minutes," replied Tomoe with an equally clipped voice. "Faster if you would prefer to just come to my office on Thirteenth Street."

Darien debated this. He didn't trust Tomoe, but he hated the hospital. Furthermore, Thirteenth Street was much closer than the hospital; he would be able to see Serena that much sooner.

Besides, even if he didn't trust Tomoe, what did he have to fear from him? The man was extremely creepy, it was true, Darien could almost imagine him stabbing someone with a syringe. But Darien wasn't exactly mortal. He was rather intrigued, too, to match a face to Tomoe's cold voice.

"I'll come to your office. Will you be there in twenty minutes?"

"Fifteen."

"Alright." Darien hung up.

The last thing he wanted to do today was indulge Tomoe's hypothesis that his blindness had been caused by some bacteria. But, he reminded himself, he had a responsibility to play along. If Serena's scars were suddenly healed, she would go through the motions of being inspected by the doctors, to preserve their identities. What made Darien feel he had the right to act any differently?

L

On the way back from Tomoe's, he stopped to pump gasoline into his beloved Mustang. Except when he reached into his pocket to pay at the pump, he couldn't find his wallet..

He sighed, glancing at the fuel gauge. Spending months upon months abandoned in a parking garage had evaporated nearly all of his Mustang's fuel. There was enough to get home with, he imagined, and if he couldn't, he could call Mikai and his tow truck –

Mikai.

Darien had totally forgotten about his newest Shittenou.

"Idiot!" he muttered at himself. He screwed the gas lid back on and slid back behind the steering wheel. As he pulled onto the road, he was opening his cell phone and dialing a number with his thumb without looking at it. He probably could even have driven without looking at the road, he realized, for he felt where the earth was compressed by the concrete and asphalt atop it and where the extra weight of a car pushed down –

"Darien?"

At Asanuma's voice on the other end of the line, Darien's eyes snapped back open. He grinned tightly and sheepishly at his reflection in the rearview mirror, pulling into the left turning lane. "Asanuma. You up?"

"What the hell, man?" Asanuma's voice, hoarse with sleep, indicated that no, he was definitely not up. "…it's like…five in the morning…"

Darien glanced at the digital clock on his dashboard. "More like ten in the morning."

Asanuma's voice groaned from the other end of the phone. "Ugh. That's still too early. Don't you know it's Boxing Day?"

"Which you don't celebrate. Get up. I have a proposition for you."

He heard the sound of covers being kicked off. "Shouldn't that be done in person, with a ring and on bended knee?"

"Fine, if you don't want to help me ambush Mikai, I'll just call Lita – "

"What? Wait! No, I'm up, I'm up, and I'm not making any more jokes! Where do you want me to meet you?"

L

Darien was tempted to transform and jump onto the balcony to get into his apartment – because in his haste to get the whole charade over with Tomoe, he'd walked out of his apartment in his very crumpled clothes from the day of the Christmas festival. But it was broad daylight outside, and someone was bound to notice a man clinging to the outside of his apartment building.

So he ducked through the lobby and into the elevator as quickly as he could – which was pretty fast – then stood in the thankfully empty but excruciatingly slow elevator. Its deplorable speed gave him time to reflect on the fact that nearly fifteen hours had passed since he last saw Serena.

His hand hovered over his cell phone to call her, but somehow that didn't seem quite right. What would he say over the phone? _Hi, Odango, I just called to say I'm thinking about you. Well, actually because I wanted to remind you that I still love you even though I can't tell you that yet because you'll think that you're betraying your princess?_

He sighed.

Besides, she was probably still asleep anyway. She'd barely slept on Christmas Eve, since they had stayed up until late talking and then woke up early to talk some more. The whole day he'd been at her house on Christmas, he'd caught her drooping a little, often toward his shoulder, her eyelids falling shut until someone spoke to her (usually her father, who did so while giving Darien the evil eye). She was probably exhausted enough to sleep until past lunch today, if not later.

But if she was sleeping, then there wouldn't be any harm in reaching for her with the rope, would there? Just to make sure she was alright. He'd just brush it, so very softly that her dream wouldn't even be interrupted, much less her slumber…

The elevator bell chimed.

He passed his hand through the air beside him.

The doors slid apart.

His fingertip brushed the rope.

Someone in the hallway gasped.

L

Turning away from Darien's apartment door, Serena nearly dropped the leftovers in her arms when the sensation brushed her, like fingers trailing down the skin just behind her ear. She spun, looking for whoever had done it –

And came face to face with a very rumpled Darien, standing wide-eyed in the elevator and staring at her as the doors began to close in front of him.

They stared at each other until the doors were nearly shut, only a crack of space left between them – then Darien made a sound from behind the doors. Serena heard a beep; the doors slid apart again. Darien darted out, then stood still in front of the closing doors and resumed his regard of her, a slightly guilty expression on his face.

Serena hadn't connected him with the brushing touch behind her ear, for he was standing at least a meter away from her. But then the faint flavor of Darien-ness that had accompanied it, and which she had put down to him merely being so close by, caught up to her.

"You were touching the rope." Her voice was not quite accusing.

The guilty furrow between his black brows deepened. "Yes."

"That's an invasion of privacy."

He ducked his head. "I know."

"You kind of scared me half to death."

His head lifted. His brows were aloft in question.

Serena lifted her hand to show him where exactly she had felt his touch in order to explain – then suddenly the spot seemed quite intimate to her, and she went slightly pink. The hot flush swept down her neck, making the delicate locket that rested against her collarbone feel much cooler than before.

"Never mind," she mumbled, flattening her bangs. She reached into her Subspace pocket, took out his wallet. "You left this at my house."

"Ah." His voice wasn't abashed anymore. "I wondered where this had gone."

From beneath her bangs she watched his long fingers take the wallet from hers – then she glimpsed something.

"Darien!"

"What?" He was looking at her sharply, as though _she_ was the one hurt.

"Your arm!" She pointed at it.

When he glanced down, uncomprehending, she took his sinewy wrist in one hand and pushed his sleeve up with the other. Revealed was a gauze bandage, neatly taped and with a small red circle in the middle.

Still holding onto his wrist, Serena looked up at him. "What happened?"  
"Oh. That." He shook his sleeve back down, brushed against her as he moved past her to unlock his apartment door. "Tomoe wanted a blood test."

"But – " Her hand caught his sleeve. "You healed, right? Your sparks still work, right?"

He put his keys in his pocket, looked down at her, put his hand over hers. "Odango. It's okay. Of course they still work."

His smile was gentle. Too gentle; Serena felt herself turning into a marshmallow in hot chocolate again. _This _was why she hadn't wanted to come to bring him back his wallet…

She let go of his sleeve and drew her hand out from his.

"I just, I was just afraid that maybe after it healed your eyes the Golden Crystal might have gotten all used up or something – since there's blood on the bandage – " She gestured clumsily at his arm once more.

"No, I had to let it bleed for a while. He would've gotten suspicious if I healed it right there in front of him." Darien grimaced. "Well, he's suspicious anyway."

"Are you sure giving him your blood was a good idea?"

"According to Helios, my blood shouldn't appear any different than that of other, uh – " Darien crooked his fingers into quotation marks. " 'Terrans.' "

Serena's expression must not have been convinced.

"I checked it myself, if that's any reassurance," Darien said as he put a light hand to the small of her back to steer her inside. Serena pretended to trip, pulling herself out of contact with his fingers, then righted herself before he could try to catch her since the whole point was to _not_ touch him.

She had been afraid that he would realize she'd done it deliberately, but he only regarded her for a moment before smiling a little and shaking his head slightly as he put down his keys on the kitchen counter.

"How'd you check them?" she said quickly, just in case he was suspicious.

His smile grew into a grin, more like the Darien she was used to. "Under a microscope. My erythrocytes, leucocytes, and thrombocytes are all identical to the ones I've seen in textbooks."

At this Serena cracked her own smile. "Now you're just trying to reassure me you know what you're talking about by using big words. But I've had biology, Mr. Shields. I know exactly what those things are."

"Oh, yeah?" said Darien, reaching out and tugging one of her ponytails. "And who gave you all their old biology notes so you'd understand those big words, huh?"  
Serena shook her hair out of his grasp, laughing despite herself. "Please, like I could even read your spiky handwriting!"

"Better than yours," retorted Darien, regarding her with a grin still on his face. "You take a line just to write three words. Hey, are those for me?"

Serena looked down at the containers in her arms in semi-surprise; she had forgotten about them.

"Oh," she said. "Yeah. Mom sent them. She thinks you're too skinny." She peered at the containers, each of which Ikuko had neatly labeled. "There's turkey, the rest of the ambrosia because she saw you liked that – " Serena looked up in order to shoot him a glare, for ambrosia was her favorite too – "so you better share some of it with me, then there's roasted potatoes, and – "

"Odangos?" suggested Darien innocently.

Serena squinted at the containers. "No, none of those – " Then she stopped. "Hey!"

Darien laughed again.

"Watch it," Serena warned him. "THIS odango comes with a knuckle sandwich. But hey." She sobered quickly. "Have you talked to Mikai?"

As abruptly as she had, Darien became serious, the grin sliding from his face. "I'm going to meet him now." He walked past her, into his bedroom.

"Really?" She followed him, only for him to bar his doorway with a hand and give her a meaningful look. "Oops. Sorry."

Darien made an 'I thought so' sound and shut the door. She leaned against it. "Is everyone going?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Odango." His voice was muffled, not only by the door between them but as though he was in the middle of pulling off his shirt. A blush brushed her cheeks as lightly as his phantom touch had brushed her skin. "I wouldn't call everyone else to go and not call you."

Serena straightened; her flushed face probably wore an expression as guilty as Darien's had been before. "Well, I mean, if you did – I wouldn't blame you! – it makes sense to make sure someone's making sure Rini's safe, and if you didn't want her there, I thought you might not, you know, tell me – !"

The door opened behind her, abruptly. It was lucky that she hadn't been leaning against it anymore, or she would have toppled backward right into a half-shirtless Darien.

He stared at her as though _she_ was the one who was half-shirtless. "You think I would do that?"

Serena tried to remember what exactly it was that she had said, but it was very hard to focus when she had to concentrate so hard to keep her eyes away from his bare chest. "Umm…"

He took a step toward her. "Serena, you're the leader of the Senshi."

Serena glued her eyes determinedly to his chin. "Yeah, but, I mean – I'm the one taking care of Rini – "

"That – " Darien cut himself off almost immediately. Etched across his face was a very strange expression, a mixture of hesitation, anger, pain – before Serena could decipher it he looked down, his bangs hanging over his eyes and hiding them from her, and began hastily to button his shirt, his fingers fumbling. "I'm sorry." He was fastening the shirt wrong; he had started one button too low on one side. "I should be the one taking care of her – "

"Hey." Serena's fingers caught his.

She felt his chin brush her fingers as he looked up. She didn't meet his eyes but concentrated instead on unfastening the buttons that he had done wrong and then on rebuttoning them correctly.

As she buttoned, she spoke slowly. "It's okay. You've had a lot to deal with."

His frustrated sigh blew her bangs from her forehead. "So have you. It's no excuse."

Serena's fingers stilled on his top button. She could feel, much as she had felt the phantom brush of Darien's touching the rope before, the memory of Rini's small arms wrapped around her and her small face buried in her neck.

"Rini…" She searched for the words, wanting him to feel her honesty but not the strange, almost fierce attachment that she felt to Rini. For it seemed like something forbidden, her attachment to his daughter with the Moon Princess, almost as forbidden as her feelings for him. "She…she definitely isn't a burden to me."

As she spoke the words, she wondered when they had become true. She didn't know when, or how, but she knew that they had, for arguing with Rini about characters in new manga that Serena bought for her, or hearing her talk about her day at dinner, or watching her sleep peacefully, little pink lips pouting and cheeks flushed beneath her spiky brown curls, were something to which Serena now looked forward.

Serena let go of his shirt and stepped back. "She reminds me what I'm fighting for." She smiled, letting the expression crinkle her eyes shut, then spun around to open the refrigerator and open her eyes, blinking away the moisture. "So let me keep her a little longer, please!"

She laughed into the cold air without quite knowing why, only that without a laugh her plead seemed too heavy. "Anyway, so. Is everyone going to see Mikai right now?"

Darien didn't respond. Serena turned away at last from the refrigerator to face him, slightly apprehensive. Had she revealed too much?

But he was at the coffee maker, scooping coffee grinds quickly into the filter.

"I'm just taking Asanuma with me now," he said, practically talking to the scoop. "I figured everyone else would still be busy with Christmas stuff and you'd be sleeping. I need to go see Helios too."

Serena frowned, forcing herself to focus on Senshi matters rather than let her apprehension dominate her thoughts. "I don't understand. Why are you taking Numa?"

Darien turned from the coffee maker, leaning against the counter. "Because…" Now he was the one who seemed to be struggling for words. "Mikai's very smart. If I go alone, he'll persuade me some way or other into not letting me tell him. He's…distracting."

A shocked look, then an impish grin, flitted across Serena's face. "Asanuma was right! You _do_have a man-crush on Mikai!"

Darien gave her a Look.

"Oh, c'mon," she said, giggling. "You have to admit you have all the symptoms."

"You belong in second grade with Buji and Rini," Darien told her, and Serena felt comforted when neither of them flinched at the Rini-reference. "All I meant was that he's known me since I was a child. He's able to read me a little better than I would like. Don't you ever feel uncomfortable around people who know you too well?"

Serena debated this for a moment, chewing on her lip. "Okay, I get what you're saying." Quickly, she added, "But it still sounds like a man-crush."

Darien rolled his eyes. "Whatever. If Asanuma comes with me, Mikai'll have to deal with making fun of him, too, so I'll be able to concentrate on outfoxing Mikai myself."

"In other words, Asanuma's the sacrificial lamb," Serena translated, half jokingly. Then she paused, smile falling slowly from her face as she regarded him. "You don't think Mikai's on our side?"

Darien shrugged, pouring a mug of coffee and walking toward the door.

Serena's eyes sharpened. "You think he's like Venus!"

Over his shoulder, half jokingly, Darien said, "What was that I said about people who know me too well?"

Serena felt a little skip in her pulse, but she brushed it aside. "But we saw all the generals! None of them looked like Mikai. We know he can't be one of them – "

"Do we?" Darien turned off the light and opened the door. He caught the locket at her throat as she walked thoughtfully past him and looked down at her. His eyes were very gold in the dimness. "I don't know about you, but I've stopped taking things for granted."

L

Mikai had grown rather used to unannounced visitors in his apartment – an acclimatization which he neither resented nor regretted. So when he returned from his salon appointment and, upon opening his apartment door, saw the light from his living room lamp spilling into the front hall, he called, "Back for a rematch so soon, Mercury?"

The temperature of the apartment seemed to drop a few degrees, as it usually did in Mercury's presence. But as Mikai shut the door behind him and saw the two pairs of men's shoes sitting beside his placemat, he realized that he had fallen victim to the same fate as so many of his favorite anime characters: being made careless by the company of a beautiful woman.

He sighed and went into the living room to face his doom, i.e., Darien.

But his doom, he discovered as his eyes landed on his couch, consisted not only of Darien but also Darien's curly-haired friend.

"Why, Asanuma-kun!" said Mikai. "What a pleasant surprise! I was looking for someone to show my new haircut. What do you think? Too emo?"

Asanuma narrowed his eyes at him, totally ignoring Mikai's admittedly weak attempt at distraction. What a sad day it was when hair dyed emerald-green didn't make anyone bat an eyelash.

"Mercury, huh?" he said.

"That would explain it." Darien was watching Mikai, too, leaning forward, his eyes as narrow as Asanuma's, but with thoughtfulness instead of antagonism. "Serena told me what you did to Bertie. I wouldn't put it past you to have acquired such fine-tuned control on your own, but this makes much more sense."

Mikai cleared his throat, hoping that Mercury didn't still have thought-microphone device in his ear. And, just in case she did, he thought, _Sorry, Mercury._

Asanuma was looking at Darien with confused brows. "So he's not like Sailor Venus?"

Mikai opened his mouth to lie, for perhaps this situation could be salvaged after all, but Darien was already shaking his head.

"No. The generals all died. Mikai has a stone, like you. I can sense it."

Mikai's bland smile became slightly puzzled; he reached into his pocket and withdrew the rock-encrusted colored stone that he had found after a meteor shower months ago. He looked down at it in his palm, weighed it. THIS was the source of his power? Mercury had never told him that…

"What kind is it?" Asanuma wanted to know. He leaned forward.

Mikai closed his fingers around it, hiding it. "There's rock all around it. I can only see a little bit of green," he said. "What does it matter? Darien, what do you want?"  
He had chosen his words as distractions, but perhaps they had worked slightly too well, for a grimace crossed Darien's face.

"I want you to give that stone to me, Mikai."

Mikai put the stone back in his pocket. "No can do, buddy. I'm one of you now."

Asanuma made a face; Darien stared at Mikai hard.

"Mikai, I know you're a genius – "

"Super genius," Mikai corrected, for his IQ was far above 170.

" – super genius, fine," said Darien impatiently. "Regardless, you don't fully grasp what you're involving yourself in."

Mikai sat back in his armchair. "You don't think so?"

"We KNOW so." Asanuma was glaring.

"You mean…" Mikai eyed Asanuma, then Darien, with mock confusion. "…you're NOT a reincarnated prince with magically gifted generals to help you while you ally with a princess from an ancient civilization on the moon to defeat a universal superpower known only as Chaos?"

Silence filled the room as though they were in a spaceship that had suddenly been opened to the vacuum of space.

Then Asanuma squawked, jumping to his feet. "How did YOU find out all this? Me and Toki didn't even get to know until _way_after Darien found out about our powers – and he was MAD at us when he found out about them – "

"Maybe you should have been strategic like me and waited until he was in a good mood to reveal it to him," drawled Mikai.

The blond adolescent growled –

"Asanuma," said Darien. "Ami vanished the same time as Rei."

Asanuma shut up. And began to watch Mikai with a hungry gaze not unlike the one an interrogator would direct toward a prisoner who had some very savory information.

Darien turned back to Mikai. "You know what the Shittenou are and what their responsibilities are."

"I do."

"And you still want to be one of them."

"Yeah." Inexplicably, Mikai felt the need to give a more formal answer. "Yes, I mean." He suppressed the almost irrepressible urge to add, 'Your Highness.'

Although, if Mercury hadn't been lying to him, Darien was a prince. And Mikai was basically swearing fealty to him. Dude,_ so_cool. Mikai smothered his urge to shout in delight.

"Even if it means telling me how you've been getting your information."

Mikai abruptly sobered. "Even if it means not telling you how I've been getting my information so I can keep getting information for you."

Darien frowned. "That's not what I said."

"You're not chopping heads off here, Darien. You beat me at those video games, but you never beat me at tactics. We're talking cloak and dagger intrigue here. What kind of strategy would it be to nullify your only source of information?"

A decade ago, in the orphanage, Mikai had thought that Darien's dark blue eyes were uncomfortably piercing, seemingly able to stare straight through him. A month ago, he had thought that his pupil-less, sclera-less, metallically-colored eyes were ten times more unnerving, able to _see_ even without being able to see, too powerful, like a knife that could cut even from within a sheath.

Now, Mikai knew that both of those, the blue and the all-gold, were like frail candlelight to the gold-irised, ink-pupiled eyes which now burned into him with laser-like heat. The air between them seemed almost to warp from the intensity.

"That's not your only motive," said Darien.

Mikai stared into the warping air, blinking a little against it. He remembered Darien's face, the panic that had flitted across his features as his face began to stretch and morph, sprouting fur. Had Ami Mizuno felt that same panic, that desperation to stay herself as something within her that she couldn't control took over, he wondered?

"Of course not," Mikai said to Darien. "Specialization is risky. I diversify to minimize loss."

"People aren't stock."

Mikai tore his eyes from Darien's gaze and saw that Asanuma was studying him with a strange, furrowed expression.

The blond said, "The more different the people you invest in are, the more of them you lose."

Mikai thought of the fiery Senshi who had eyed him so hostilely and not smiled once in all the time he'd covertly watched her. "Interesting statistic," he said. "Over a period of ten years, one hundred percent of stocks increase in price. If you hold on to your stocks and wait for long enough, there is no risk."

Asanuma narrowed his eyes at him. "Then why do you diversify to minimize risk?"

Mikai grinned. "Because people aren't stock."

A sound came from behind Mikai then. He turned to see that Darien had opened the front door and was standing in it, putting on his coat. "We're meeting at my apartment at three o'clock this afternoon." He handed Asanuma his jacket as Asanuma came up beside him. "Meet us there."

"Well," Mikai said, aware that goose bumps were lifting up along his arms. "I'll try." _But Sailor Mercury might assassinate me first_. "You might want to leave me a bodyguard, though."

Asanuma made a sound behind Darien; Darien merely quirked a brow. "I have a better idea," he said. "Convince her to accompany you this afternoon."

L

Sailor Mercury did not have the slightest intention of accompanying Mikai into the midst of her chess pieces.

"_You_ – " Her gloved finger shook inches from Mikai's nose. Her urge to wring his neck appeared to have interfered with her capacity for speech. " – are the most Terran of any Terran that ever _lived_! Do you know what you've done? You have no _idea _what you've done! Not only do you have me speaking in italics and exclamations like Pluto, but now Pluto will discern that _I _am the source of the interference!"

Mikai kept his backpack of dirt unzipped because although she no longer seemed about to turn him into an icicle, he preferred not to take any chances. "I don't see how that affects your master plan. You know where Saturn is, you have Rei, you've contained Endymion's flash-form, and you have all the relevant time-paths."

Mercury shook her head. Her hair fell over his visor as she sank slowly to Mikai's sofa, a hand to her temple.

"Ah," he heard her moan, so quietly that he had to stop breathing in order to hear. "You've recovered more than I thought, haven't you, little girl? All these things should not have been disclosed to him…"

Satisfaction nudged a smile onto Mikai's face. He stepped back and smoothed his face so that Mercury would not realize that he had heard.

He spoke. "Here's what I propose. I tell them the truth."

Mercury's head snapped up. Tiny icicles flew from her dark hair to spatter across his floor with small clinks. Her eyes bored into him, light light light, not a trace of Ami Mizuno's darkness inside them, and he felt the temperature dropping to extremes. Icicles formed on his eyelashes; he blinked against them as they tried to freeze his eyelids shut.

"Mercury, stop!" he shouted at last.

She looked away from him.

The ice around his eyes began to melt, dripping down his cheeks. He swiped at them, warily watching her. He had always know that she saw him as a threat, but suddenly it felt as though she saw him as a threat to be dealt with rather than ignored. What had changed?

"By the truth," she said slowly. "What do you mean?"

Mikai watched her as he spoke. "I mean the truth. Not whatever it is that you're concealing from me. Just what you told me to persuade me to help you."

"I didn't have to persuade you," she said scornfully. "As soon as I mentioned Shields's name you practically begged me to train you."

"As I recall it, you snapped two of my carpal bones."

Mercury eyed him with an arched brow. "You're digressing."

"No, _you_digressed in order to draw attention away from the fact that I know you haven't told me everything," returned Mikai. "I merely pursued your deviation. But returning to the subject, I tell them that you're Ami's flash-form. I explain what flash-forms are. And I tell them Rei's safe and in training."

Mercury said nothing for a moment, just watched him with her light eyes.

"Nothing about Rei," she said at last.

Mikai resisted the urge to lift a brow. "Nothing about Rei."

"And…nothing…" She seemed to be struggling. "About me. Except the flash-form."

The skin around his eyes felt tight. "Just that you're Ami's flash-form."

Her hand was at her temple as she regarded him; she didn't seem to realize it. "That's all."

"That's all," he responded, for he knew that she had intended it as a question. He hesitated. "Although if you came with me, you could make sure they only find out what you want them to know – "

"No!" burst out Mercury.

He stopped and eyed her with pierced brows aloft. He was fairly certain that she had burst out before, like an apprehensive child. At least, not in front of him.

Mercury seemed to realize this as she stared back at him: she drew herself up. "Aren't you supposed to be loyal to your prince?" she said. "Allowing me to choose which tactical information you will and will not present to him is idiocy."

"No," said Mikai. For perhaps it was a trick of the light, but he could swear there was something darker in her eyes. "It's trust."

L

"We're not adequately prepared for this." Mercury moved swiftly through the ice chamber, tossing clothing and money at Rei as she darted to and fro among the icy stalagmites. "_You_'re not prepared for this. I shouldn't have interfered with the time-paths after all. Pluto is a hide-bound conservative, but she is not lacking in intellect, and I underestimated her exaggerations – "

"You're not lacking in intellect either," said Rei. "So stop running around and muttering like a hobo. Clear your mind and give it a second to work for you."

Mercury paused mid-step.

She looked at Rei.

Rei looked back at her.

"Very well." Mercury began moving again. "You were right. Very good, Rei, that's exactly what the Senshi's spiritual specialist should do." She threw another shirt at Rei. "In addition to other things. Should Pluto catch up to me, so long as you utilize the shielding techniques that you have learned, you should be able to evade her. However, this means staying away from the group. From Asanuma."

She glanced at Rei. "Can I trust you with this?"

Yet again Rei felt as though she was being treated like a child. It was one thing for Haruka and Michiru, who were both old enough to hold jobs, to have done it. But it rankled much more to be spoken to thus by a person for whom she had once ordered fries at the arcade because said person was too shy to do it herself. Of course, that had been Ami, and this was Sailor Mercury…

For the third time that day, Rei appraised Mercury's aura from the corner of her eye. When Mercury glanced at her, though, she looked away. "I know what Sailor Mars's responsibilities are."

"Yes." Mercury frowned. "Yes, but what about Rei Hino's?" Her frown dug deeper into her pale skin. Then she closed that suitcase into which she had thrown all the clothes. "Pluto _was_ right. Too much has changed. I think that I may have bitten off more than I can chew."

Rei said nothing.

"At any rate – " Mercury inhaled. "In the suitcase I have placed enough money to cover hotels for approximately two months. Keep this in your Subspace pocket." She handed a thin wallet to Rei. "There's a debit card, credit card, and bank account number for a Swiss account with enough to last you a decade. Saturn's the one Senshi whom Pluto has never been able to track, but it certainly wouldn't go amiss to teach the shielding exercises to the child. Remember that you're running not only from Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune, but also, possibly, Endymion and High Senshi, who may confront you, in which case – " She breathed deeply again. "In which case I would strongly urge you to re-evaluate the situation and decide whether a destroyed system would be preferable to the alternative."

Rei nodded, once.

"Are you absolutely certain?" Mercury's eyes bored into hers. "I will not be able to have any contact with you at all after this. Any questions you need answered, you must ask _now_."

Rei thought, looked surreptitiously at Mercury's aura again, then shook her head. "No. I understand."

Mercury regarded her seriously for a moment. Then slowly, her lips curved upward, and the tiniest furrow dented her forehead beneath her tiara. "Yes. Of course you do. You have improved greatly at understanding."

Rei was not sure if this was a compliment or an insult. Knowing Mercury, it was a little of both. A compliment for who she was now and an insult to who had had been. Except that Rei did not know if those two people were different or if they were both Reis, or…

She turned to go.

"One more thing, Rei."

"More sentimental last words?" said Rei, half in exasperation, stopping and looking over her shoulder. If she was going, she wanted to be gone. She did not want to linger and contemplate any longer the thoughts of how after this it was it, of how she would be completely alone, of how the only people coming after her would be people who wanted her dead or people who wanted her submerged into Mars, which might as well have been the same thing.

Blinking her burning eyes, she looked at Mercury's aura again instead of meeting her gaze.

Mercury's voice was much softer than it had ever been. "Ami always wanted to be your friend."

L

"And you always said _I _was vain." Avery smirked from her seat. "You ran before they could even put a scratch on your face, Bertie."

"Surely you've heard of a strategic retreat, Prisma," Bertie retorted, but her hands, where she had clasped them behind her in preparation to face Rubeus, were shaking.

As their fiery-headed commander slipped into the room, shutting the door behind him, Bertie strode forward. "I have more data now. Rubeus, please, tell the prince that if I just have a few more days I can find the new Shittenou's weakness as well – "

"You had your chance Bertie," interrupted Prisma. "Now it's time for us to go again."

"Rubbish!" said Bertie scornfully. "None of you managed to so much as scratch one of them. Rubeus, you saw, I had Moon, Jupiter, and all the males incapacitated before the new general arrived. I can do the same again with him included – "

Avery and Catzi groaned. "Rubeus, don't let her," protested Catzi, and Avery insisted, "It's _our _turn – "

"_Quiet_!"

The sisters cringed.

"_None _of you – " Rubeus stepped slowly around the room, circling them. " – will be doing anything more than procuring energy. Emerald has discovered your failures, and she orders all four of you to return to the mother ship to be debriefed."

Bertie went very still. Avery gnashed her teeth, twisting her whip with white-knuckled fingers.

"Rubeus," said Prisma. "Has she threatened to – ?"

"She will tell Prince Diamond and make a motion of no confidence to remove me from my post."

"Rubeus!" gasped Catzi. "But you'll be – "

"I _won't_," Rubeus cut her off sharply. "Because I will find the little brat."

"Without us?" Bertie's braid swung as she shook her head. "You'll never – "

Rubeus set one hand on Bertie's shoulder, the other on the back of Avery's chair. He leaned forward, meeting Avery's, then Catzi's, then Prisma's, then Bertie's wet eyes.

"Sisters," he said very softly. They leaned forward, to hear him. "Sisters. If I could not succeed where my subordinates have failed, what kind of leader would I be?"

Catzi sniffled and leaned her head forward onto Prisma's shoulder. "An Emerald kind," she said in a muffled voice.

They all laughed. But above his chuckling lips, Rubeus's garnet eyes burned fiercely.

L

"Rini…" Serena hesitated at her bedroom door, pulling her jacket on over her sweater and leggings. "You're _sure_ you don't want to come?"

Rini kept her eyes on the tray of beads in front of her. "I'm sure." Without looking up she knew that Serena was about to press one more time. "I have to finish making this for Buji."

She heard Serena shut the door that she had just opened. "I really don't want to leave you alone, Rini."

The fact that Serena hadn't asked Rini what she was making for Buji, or teased her about it, was a sign of how serious she was. Rini lifted her eyes to Serena's and told her firmly, "If they knew how to find me, they would already be here."

The flicker of worry that crossed Serena's scarred face made Rini add hastily, "They don't know how. Why would they have waited until the festival to attack if they knew?"

A smile crossed Serena's face; she ruffled Rini's bangs. "You're so logical."

Rini smiled back – but she didn't think that Serena noticed, for suddenly the blonde was biting her lip and wearing the same look she had worn when Rini came downstairs yesterday and found Darien sitting at the Tsukinos' breakfast table.

"Rini…if this is…you know…I mean, I know yesterday – " Serena was flushing dark.

Rini felt a stab of panic. This was exactly what she had been trying to forestall.

"It's because I don't want any of them asking me about the future," she blurted out. It was the first valid excuse that came to her mind, undoubtedly planted there by her earlier thoughts about Serena's doomed future. "I know about you all in the future, and it could affect the timeline if I reveal what I know, but I'm afraid they might try to force me – "

"Rini." The flush was gone from Serena's face. She knelt in front of Rini, with a stern expression on her face that made guilty pink try to crawl up Rini's cheeks. "They won't make you."

Rini stubbornly pushed the guilt from her; she was lying to Serena for a good reason. Serena had to go without her, because if Rini went, Darien would act awkwardly around Serena again. "They might."

"They won't," Serena repeated. "I won't let them." Her eyes were still so stern. "No one will ever force you to do something you don't want to as long as I'm here, Rini, I promise."

_But you're not going to be here._Rini felt worse than she had felt when she had met this time's Asanuma and he hadn't known her.

She turned her head to the side, lifting her arms and crossing them over her stomach. "I'm not going."

Serena sighed. "Okay." She smiled again, a little lopsidedly. "I can't force you to go after I just said I wouldn't let anyone make you do something you don't want to, can I?"

Despite herself, Rini smiled back. "Now you're being logical."

L

Motoki, Asanuma, and Lita had already arrived and settled into his living room when Darien sensed the faint thrumming in his bones that accompanied Mikai's presence. He opened the door just as Mikai knocked and led Mikai to where everyone was sitting before folding himself back into his armchair to wait for Serena.

"We didn't get to talk on Christmas Eve." Mikai held out his hand to Lita. "I'm Mikai."

Lita eyed his hand for a second, then leaned forward to grasp and shake it. With narrowed eyes, Darien wondered for a moment why something seemed different about her until he realized that she was actually sitting on his couch, sandwiched between its arm and Motoki. Never before in his apartment had she actually sat _in_ one of the sofas; she had perched instead on the arms, poised to jump between him and Serena at the slightest provocation.

He followed Lita's arm to where her hand firmly clasped Motoki's in her lap and wondered what had changed.

"Yeah, yeah, enough with the niceties." Asanuma seemed to have channeled Lita's old spirit: he leaned against the back of the couch, arms crossed, foot tapping. "Can someone go drag Serena here so we can start already?"

Mikai lifted his brows. "Why can't we just start and fill her in when she gets here?"

"I thought you were omniscient, Kentaro," said Asanuma. "Serena's the leader of the freaking Senshi. You can't start a meeting without her."

Mikai's brows did rise at this. "Really? I hadn't realized…"

Darien opened the apartment door.

Serena, one hand lifted to knock, blinked at him.

He smiled into her eyes.

She smiled back – then her forehead scrunched into contrition. "I'm sorry for making everyone wait!" She rocked back and forth on her heels as he closed the door, then followed him into the living room and bowed apologetically. "Sorry, sorry, everyone! My mom wanted me to bring cookies, I had to wait while she wrapped them up – "

"_More_food?" Darien eyed the package cradled in the crook of Serena's arm. "Does she think I'm anorexic?"

"I would peg you as bulimic," said Asanuma darkly from beneath his cloud of brooding.

"Look, Numa, this gingerbread man's wearing an outfit like yours!" Serena pulled a cookie from the container and slid it neatly between his lips. Asanuma mrrgmplhed with thunderous brows. "Rini made it."

Asanuma's brows unknitted a little.

Motoki took two with a quiet murmur and smile of thanks and handed one to Lita.

"WAIT!" exclaimed Serena. "There's a special one for you, Lita, see? I made it." She presented it proudly; it was wrapped in its own bit of wax paper. Wax paper which didn't quite manage to disguise the horrific brown frosting and rather threatening grimace painted on its misshapen face. "See, it's shaped like those octopus hot dogs you made that one time!"

A snort escaped Lita.

Serena's proud smile wavered into a crestfallen, lower-lip-trembling expression. "You don't like it?"

"You meatball head, you know I do." Lita took it with even more careful hands than Serena had used to present it. "But it's so pretty that I can't eat it. I'll save it."

"Nice save, Lita," remarked Darien, regarding the strangely-shaped gingerbread man from his position behind Serena. He couldn't resist. "That thing would probably kill you if you ate it. Scratch that, just looking at its making me feel a little faint."

An elbow stabbed the breath from his chest. He doubled over, gasping but grinning, because Serena wouldn't have done that if she wasn't feeling comfortable with him.

"You don't have to worry about _that_, Lita," said Serena airily. "Mom was the one who baked them, I just decorated with frosting." She turned to Mikai. "Mikai-san, won't you have one?

"I wouldn't dream of refusing," said the green-haired mechanic. And only as he took a gingerbread man did Darien remember –

"Wait! No eating in the living room – "

"Too late, Shields," said Lita around a mouthful of cookie, spraying crumbs in a manner which Darien just knew was deliberate. "Hope you have a vacuum."

Asanuma took a wide chomp of a cookie – not, Darien noticed, the Asanuma-frosted one, which sat safely on the coffee table. "Yup!"

Darien leaned down, putting his mouth near Serena's ear. "Who needs Mikai to distract everyone from interrogation when you're doing it so well yourself?"

She turned her head just enough to slant him a look from beneath her lashes. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

He just shook his head. "Where's my Darien-shaped cookie?"

She turned back around and clapped her hands. "Okay, everybody, you can keep eating your snacks but now it's time for business too!" She settled on the floor against the armchair, and Darien slid into the armchair itself, nudging her leg with his socked foot to let her know that she wasn't getting away with not making him a cookie. Daring of him, perhaps, but the annoyed look that she sent sparkling up at him was worth the risk.

"A-HEM," she said, leaning back hard so that his leg was ground against the armchair rather painfully. "Mikai, first off, thanks a KAJILLION for saving us at the festival."

"Keh," huffed Asanuma.

"Nice Inuyasha impression," said Mikai at the same time Serena pointed at Asanuma and exclaimed, "Inuyasha!"

They looked at each other, then burst into laughter.

"Oh, great," said Asanuma in disgust. "Is there anyone but me who isn't enamored with this guy?"

"Okay, okay." Darien intervened. He wasn't sure whether to be mildly jealous of the laughter Serena and Mikai were sharing or slightly disturbed that his friend watched a shojo anime. "Mikai, should we be expecting a Senshi?"

Serena's laughter died. She tilted her head back up to look at Darien, eyes wide. Then she lowered her head again, looking toward Mikai.

"You mean other than the two of us," said Lita flatly, exchanging a glance with Serena and then looking back at Darien.

Mikai rubbed his jaw. "Aw, man. You mean you're going to make me explain all this, Darien?"

"What else did you think this meeting was for?" said Asanuma, answering for his friend. "Spill the beans, grass-head. And keep in mind that if you lie I'll know it."

Darien kept his expression blank although this revelation was a surprise to him.

"Will you now?" said Mikai coolly. "I imagine the temperature of my palms will rise?"

"I'm not going to tell you how it works so you can figure out how to beat it," said Asanuma scornfully.

For some reason, Mikai was smiling suddenly. Darien's brows furrowed. He glanced down at Serena just in time to see her look away from Mikai and meet his eyes knowingly.

He gave her a 'See what I mean?' look. And tried to push to the side the very distracting thrill that being able to exchange looks with her again sent through him. If he was so obvious she'd run right away.

He also pulled his legs up into the chair, Indian-style, because the urge to cover Serena's pink-socked foot with his own was just too strong.

"Wouldn't you have to be holding my hand to know if the temperature of my palm changed?" said Mikai.

"Please, guys," said Motoki.

His quiet voice was accompanied by a fierce, death-promising glare from Lita.

"Okay, okay." Mikai ran a hand through his hair. "No. She's not coming."

"Who's not coming?" Serena and Lita demanded in unison.

"How about I tell the story from the beginning?" Mikai proposed. "I think it'll be more efficient."

Serena looked at Lita. Lita leaned her head back against Motoki's arm, deliberating.

"Okay," said Darien.

"Hey!" yelped Serena.

"My apartment," said Darien.

"MY Senshi!" she countered, twisting around to glare warningly.

"Oh, just let him, Serena," said Lita. "We won't let Mr. Cryptic out of our sight until he's explained everything to our satisfaction."

"Well, we don't have all night," Serena told Mikai with only a slight hint of apology in her tone. "Rini's home alone."

"Alone?" asked Lita quickly.

"Well, with my family. You know what I mean. She's alone with no one to _protect_ her," Serena clarified.

"I'll just start telling the story," said Mikai placidly. "Does anyone remember the mini-earthquakes a few weeks ago?"

"Yes," said Lita and Darien.

"Well, apparently," Mikai drawled, "I'm to blame."

"Oh..." Everyone turned to see Motoki nodding. "Did you have weird dreams, too?"

"Yeah," said Mikai. "And I woke up in strange spots and positions."

Motoki nodded sagely. "That happened to me and Asanuma too."

"Separately, I hope," said Darien. Serena tried to frown reproachfully but grinned goofily instead.

Mikai was also grinning. "Anyway, this youma showed up in front of the garage one day. It was chasing this dark-haired girl around. That was the youma I told you about, Dare, the one I killed with a flamethrower? Well, I figured the girl might give me a thank-you kiss for saving her or something, but she ran away instead. But she seemed familiar to me, so I went home and started hunting the net. I came across the article from when you and Serena-san got in that youma attack at school, and then I found an article about two girls disappearing soon afterward."

"Ami and Rei," Serena murmured.

"Yeah," said Mikai. "And I realized that the girl I'd seen was definitely Ami Mizuno."

Serena sucked in a breath of air.

"I also realized that the four of you must be Senshi."

"Darien's not a Senshi," said Lita. But her voice was absent rather than offended; on her face was the same intent expression of concentration that covered Serena's features. "What then?"

"Then, I came over to Darien's house in the hopes of tricking him into revealing his secret identity. Of course he was far too sharp to fall for my verbal traps, but I did see his face morphed into some sort of canine muzzle, so the cat was out of the bag anyway."

"I _knew_you couldn't have missed seeing that," muttered Darien. Serena shot him a look, clearly annoyed that she hadn't been informed of the possible exposure of his identity.

"Anyway, when I went home that night, who should I find sitting on my living room sofa but Sailor Mercury?"

Serena's body shot forward like a sprung mouse-trap. "Is she okay? Is she safe?"

There was a small silver hoop in Mikai's lower lip. With his tongue he began to fiddle with it for a moment.

At last, he answered. "That depends on whether you're asking about Sailor Mercury…or Ami."

L

It was time for yet another doctor's appointment. Usually Buji looked forward to the appointments, since he got to go out with Darien-baka or Serena-nee-chan – or, on the best days, both of them. But lately his 'kaa-chan had been so tired, laughing one minute and tears running down her face the next, and Buji was convinced it was the doctor's fault, somehow.

He had tried to convince her to let him come along to the doctor's so he could tell that doctor to stop making his 'kaa-chan so tired and crazy, but she had pulled him onto her lap and hugged him tight so that his face was mashed against her big baby-belly.

"Why do you want to go somewhere boring like that?" she said. "You get to go to Ikuko-san's! She said she's been looking forward to you coming over!"

"Ikuko-san?" echoed Buji with some alarm, and he pulled free from the hand holding his face against her belly. "What about Darien-ba – san?"

Kaa-chan told him that Darien had been too busy to watch Buji and that when she had called Serena's, Ikuko had said that Serena was out but that she would love to watch him.

So here Buji was, in the brand-new Charizard shirt he'd gotten for Christmas, helping his mother up the Tsukinos' front steps.

The door swung open just as they stepped onto the porch.

"Hello!" Nee-chan's okaa-san greeted. "May-chan, you go on ahead, Buji's in good hands – are you _sure_ you don't want someone to take you, I can call Serena –"

"No way!" blurted out Buji. "I'm not letting someone with just a permit drive my kaa-chan!"

Both the moms laughed as if he'd said something funny, and he was just beginning to scowl when Ikuko-san said, "I meant I'd call Serena and she could ask Darien to drive."

"I'm alright, Ikuko, thank you," said Kaa-chan.

"Well, let me walk you to the car at least," said Ikuko-san. "You go on ahead inside, Buji, there's brownies in the kitchen."

Feeling a little resentful toward both the mothers despite himself – at Kaa-chan for not letting him go with her to the doctor and at Ikuko-san for treating him like such a _kid_("There's brownies in the kitchen," he mimicked grumpily in his head) – Buji wandered into the house with his backpack.

He was fairly familiar with the place; he'd been here for Nee-chan's birthday party last summer, when she and Lita-chan had looked so sad.

A sigh gusted from him as he thought about how the older people got, the sadder they seemed to get. Then he stepped into the kitchen – and stopped.

Rini, up on her knees in a chair at the newspaper-covered table, looked up and promptly froze. Her face went white.

"You!"

Her Angry Voice, much shriller than it usually was, poked Buji's throat back to life. "Do you ALWAYS have to say that when you see me?" He dumped his backpack on a free chair at the table and stepped past it to snag a brownie from the cooling rack on the kitchen counter.

Only as he turned around with a bite of it in his mouth did he notice that Rini was scrabbling all her stuff up from the table and trying to crunch it into a ball of newspaper against her chest.

"Hey," said Buji around his mouthful of fudgy dough, reaching out. "Whassalldat?"

"None of your business!" Rini darted to the other end of the table, foiling his attempt to see what was crumpled up inside the newspaper. She held one hand behind her back, too; she seemed to be trying, one-handed, to pull something off.

A Cheshire Cat's grin began to unfurl on Buji's face.

"It's okay, Rini-_kohai_," he said. "I gave you the bracelet so you could _wear_ it, you know."

"I'm not wearing it!" returned Rini loudly, but now her face was turning from white to pink.

Ikuko chose this moment to enter the kitchen. "Oh, Rini! Now that Buji's here you can give him the present you made him!"

The look on Rini's face was one of incredulous betrayal. "You didn't tell me he was coming!"

Buji blinked. "You have a present for me?"

"Oh, yes, she's been working on it all morning." Ikuko poured two glasses of milk and set them on the table. "Well, my soap opera's about to be on. I'll be folding laundry in the living room if you two need me."

She left. Buji took another brownie and sat down.

"You don't have to give it to me if you don't want to." He dipped his brownie in the milk and regarded it thoughtfully, chin on his hand. "It's okay."

Rini stood clutching the ball of newspaper still in her arms. "I told you it doesn't have anything to do with you."

"Oh." For some reason his chest hurt. Buji put the glass of milk back down. He must have gulped too much of the cold liquid too fast.

He sat for a moment, waiting for the sting to subside, then sighed and heaved his book bag into his lap. He rummaged in it and pulled something out, then pushed it across the table to Rini.

"That's the first Bleach manga. I saw you looking at Takashi's copy in class. But you gotta keep it hidden because my mom doesn't know I read Bleach, and if Ikuko-san saw it and told her, I'd get in trouble."

He returned his attention to his backpack again and pulled out the new Christopher Paolini book his mom had just bought him.

"Here." Something small landed beside his elbow.

Buji looked up. Rini was back to standing at the other end of the table, but she was watching him. He looked down at the object beside him.

"I didn't know what to get you," she said tautly. "So I made you the same thing you gave me. I wanted to make it in colors so it'd match Naruto's outfit, but I couldn't find any orange beads, so I had to use gold – "

"You DO read Naruto?" Buji demanded; the bracelet with its fat blue beads and the larger gold ones spelling out his name was already on his wrist. "Isn't it better than Inuyasha?"

"_No_," retorted Rini. But she slid back into her chair and took the brownie that Buji pushed at her.

L

_That depends on whether you're asking about Sailor Mercury…or Ami._

Mikai's words seemed to hang in the air like icicles, dripping icy fears that trickled down their spines. Silence settled over them all like a snowdrift, growing higher and colder with each passing minute.

"Shit." Lita slumped forward from under Motoki's arm, knuckles ground into her forehead.

"I don't understand," said Asanuma flatly.

Mikai glanced at Lita, then Darien. "I was under the impression that the two of you may have had similar experiences."

Darien's insides were beginning to twist uncomfortably – as was the dark presence that had been so recently barred away. Was he really going to emerge so easily? His eyes fell to his fists clenching on his knees – caught the gold glinting beside his leg. _Serena._

His fingers uncurled.

"Wait," said Lita. "_Shields_?"

He felt everyone's attention settling on him, alighting one by one like a flock of birds landing on a power line.

"I don't understand…" Motoki trailed off, looking at Lita. "Oh." His eyes flew up, wide and purple-smudged. "Dare, you too?"

"Oops," said Mikai. "Sorry, I didn't realize this would be a surprise."

Darien compressed his lips. He watched Serena. She watched him. Had he really thought that he would be able to read her so easily once he could see? He had the strangest feeling as she watched him, silent, dark-eyed, that what Mikai had just revealed, she had known all along.

"Not anymore," he said at last.

Her gaze fell from his like sand crumbling from a too-ambitious sand castle; she looked back to Mikai.

He followed her example, looked at all his friends. He wanted the looks on their faces to go away. Earlier, perhaps, he would have felt pleased by their obvious concern for him, but he only felt guilty and shocked by the ramifications that had somehow flown straight over his head. How would he have felt, had Serena not told anyone that an alternate consciousness inside her had been trying to take over her body?

"Please tell us," said Serena to Mikai.

Mikai sat forward and began. He told them that when the Senshi had been reincarnated after dying with their princess a thousand years ago, a part of each of their souls had been preserved as a perfect copy of the individuals that they had been, with their knowledge, memories, personalities, and powers intact. He told them that these copies, called flash-forms, had been created as a survival mechanism, meant to emerge and take over if, in times of extreme danger or instability, the soul's current incarnation was unable to protect itself or the Moon Princess.

"I wasn't in danger when mine took over," Lita interrupted to say flatly.

"Then you must have been unstable," said Mikai shortly. He held up a hand to cut off her retort. "Look, I don't control this stuff. This is what I've been told, and I'm telling it to you because I thought you might be relieved to realize you weren't going insane."

Serena rocked up on her knees. "But Ami! What about _Ami_? What happened to her? Is she okay?"

Mikai didn't have a concrete answer to this question. He had only his hypotheses. And he felt strangely loathe to share Ami's past with this girl who had not cared enough to find Ami when Ami needed her.

His voice came out coolly. "She needed Mercury to take over for her. Do _you_ think she's okay?"

"Hey!" snapped a multitude of voices. Mikai flinched, his shoulder blades hitting the back of the loveseat. The tall brunette was scowling at him, Asanuma was glaring venom toward him, and even the tall quiet one had his eyes narrowed.

Mikai turned to look at Darien, but what Serena had done distracted his eyes from his black-haired friend.

She was on her knees, head bent and hands pressed flat to the carpet. Her shoulders shook.

"Please," came her muffled voice.

Mikai's teeth clenched. He wanted to look away from the bowed golden head. But he couldn't. It burned there in his vision like a horrific sight from which he could not tear his eyes.

"I don't know," he admitted at last. "Physically, she's fine. But Mercury's in control right now."

As he saw her small fingers grip the carpet tighter, he felt a small swoop of righteous vengeance that she had been made to face the consequences of what she had failed to do. But also, digging into him like a child's frightened fingers, a memory of himself, of his own guilty helplessness to help a woman whose sad smile was so similar to Ami Mizuno's.

"And whose side is she on?"

Mikai forced his eyes from Serena's white knuckles.

He met Darien's gaze. "Yours, I think," he said. His voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat. "But also her own." Then he reconsidered. "Actually, the princess's."

"Damn it." Asanuma dropped to the sofa. "That effing bitch again."

"Stop," protested Serena, but her voice was the only one speaking out in defense of the princess. "She didn't choose to control us."

"But Mercury chose to control Ami, didn't she?" Asanuma retorted. "And she's still controlling her, huh?" He looked to Mikai but didn't wait for an answer. "Because she wants to find that effing princess. What happened to you when Jupiter tried to take you over, Lita?"

Lita was still and gray-faced. Motoki slid his arms around her shoulders, putting his face to the side of her head and rocking her.

"They fight you." Darien spoke up. "They want to get out. What they want is different from what you want. What you don't want to do – " He broke off, his fingers clenching. "When they take over, half the time you don't even realize it."

Sweat had began to slicken Mikai's palms as he watched the gruff brunette turn suddenly to a silent marble statue and listened to Darien's stilted voice. He thought again of Ami, trapped and deprived even of the knowledge that she existed.

"Are you still going to defend the princess now?" said Asanuma to Serena. "Darien's her soul mate, and he's not even on her side."

The room was silent. Serena lifted her hands to her face and dug the heels of her palms into her eyes. Darien scented faint, phantom saltiness. He wanted to pull her hands from her eyes and to tell her that she was making his living room smell like the beach and see her crack a smile and to push the hair back from her face with a gentle hand.

But he didn't, because he saw, from the jut of her shoulder blades beneath her sweater, that if he touched her now, she would pull away. Worse than pull away, she would feel guilty and they would move five steps backward again.

Instead he just watched her, quietly, as she swiped her hands across her eyes and drew her back up straight where she knelt.

"If we find her," she said, looking at Asanuma, then Mikai. "Mercury. If we find her, we can persuade her – I'll convince her to let Ami be if I – if I – "

"It's not that easy," interrupted Mikai. "Mercury said, and I quote, that it's not a matter of letting Ami out."

"Then – " Serena faltered. She clenched her fingers in her skirt, and Darien could taste the wild stammering of her heart, the metallic adrenaline shooting through her arteries with nowhere to go, nothing to fight. "Then _how_?" she burst out. "How can I free her!"

"You can't." Mikai's voice was flat. "Mercury would wipe the floor with you."

Silence began to crystallize, cold and sharp, in the room. Serena stumbled abruptly to her feet, as though it had begun to frost her skin and stiffen her limbs. She tripped on her hair before she caught herself against the coffee table. She stood, hands balled in fists against her forehead; began jerkily toward the glass doors leading onto the balcony. Then she jolted to a halt. She turned and stepped back to the coffee table, next to Lita's legs. She pressed her face into the brunette's knees.

Darien watched Lita place her hand on Serena's head, between her odangos. Vaguely, Serena's voice, muffled by Lita's denim-clad knees, seeped back into his awareness. "…too? Do you know about Rei?"

He heard Mikai say, "I don't know."

Darien felt Asanuma stir. Only then did he tear his eyes from Serena's golden head, to stab the boy with a threatening glare.

But Asanuma wasn't looking at him. Or Mikai. He was watching Serena. He got to his feet and then crouched down next to her, on his haunches. "Serena-chan."

Serena turned her head slowly beneath Lita's hand, her scars whispering against the fabric in the absolute silence of the room.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

Asanuma ignored this. He said, "You watch Naruto, right, Serena-chan?"

Serena began to shake her head. "Asanuma – "

"Do you?"

Biting her lip, Serena nodded.

"We're going to find Rei and Ami." Asanuma grasped her hand with his own, arranging them as though they were about to start thumb-wrestling. Then he held their joined hands up, in front of Serena's eyes. "That's the promise of a lifetime."

Understanding filtered across Serena's face. A tremulous smile, almost like an afterthought, began to pull at her lips.

"We'll definitely save them, Usa-chan." Motoki leaned forward, placing his hand atop Lita's between Serena's golden odangos, and meeting her eyes. "That's our way of the ninja."

A shaky laugh escaped Serena. She rocked up on her feet, still holding Asanuma's hand, and folded Lita and Motoki in a clumsy hug. She babbled a tumble of words, sorries and thank yous and I promises, and, painfully aware that they owed this new knowledge and chance to save their friends to a man who was sitting quietly by with his face grim beneath dark brows, she stretched her hand out to touch his shoulder.

Mikai looked up, eyes still shadowed, but after a moment he lightly touched the back of her fingers in reply.

"C'mon, Darien." At Motoki's joking voice, Serena lifted her head from Lita's shoulder. She met the gaze of Darien's reflection in the glass doors. "We know you're too cool for Naruto, but you've gotta join the group hug."

"Too cool?" echoed Asanuma's voice. Serena felt him extricate his hand from hers. She twisted to watch him shuffle on his knees to Darien's TV and pull a bright orange box with a familiar ninja on the front from beneath the DVD player. "I think not, my friend."

"That's Buji's," said Darien from his armchair.

Serena squinted at the season number emblazoned on the side of the box set. "No, it's not. Buji lent that season to Rini to watch. It's sitting on my nightstand."

Asanuma cackling, Mikai grinning, everyone looked back at Darien.

He sighed and stood up. Serena watched his reflection approach in the glass doors, simultaneously felt and saw him place a hand on her shoulder.

She looked up at him, head tilted, too-bright smile slipping slightly from her lips as she wondered why he was looking so challengingly at Mikai and Asanuma.

"We'll figure it out," he said. "Dattebayo."

As the other burst into laughter, shrieking, breathless, almost hysterical laughter, as though they felt bad for laughing, Serena split her face with a grin again. But she was biting her bottom lip, hard, because it hurt, somehow, it hurt to have such wonderful, brave, incredible, selfless friends, to worry that what had happened to Ami might happen to Lita, to worry that Rei's flash-form might attack Asanuma the way that Lita had attacked Motoki that say, to worry that her own flash-form might be the one to emerge and attack – to worry that her wonderful, brave, incredible, selfless friends who were trying so hard to comfort her now would be the ones to pay for the mistake that she had made a thousand years ago.

She bit her lips harder and lowered her head, hiding her face against her shoulder to hide any tears that might trickle out.

Her trembling lips met warm skin, and she pressed her lips to it for a moment, trying to push back the cry that wanted to spill out amidst everyone's laughter, before she realized that her lips were against that warm skin and not against the fabric of her sweater.

Serena lifted her face and met Darien's golden eyes. And she knew from the way they burned into her, and from the sudden tautness of the rope that was knotted around her rib, that he knew what she had been thinking. Not about the princess but about her own flash-form and what she might do if it took control.

He bent down close to her, and for a minute she thought he was going to move his hand from her shoulder to the side of her face and thread his fingers through her hair the way he had done that day she fell down the stairs, the day she'd found out that he might leave. She began to cringe away, the memory of her past self's transgression as fresh as an hour-old corpse.

But he only spoke directly into her ear, so that the others could not hear, six words that reassured her more than any Naruto jokes could have.

"I won't let it take you."

L

To Rubeus, there were two types of honor.

There was honor to yourself, in refusing to violate your beliefs.

And there was an honor that bound you to do your utmost to help those whom you loved and to whom you had sworn loyalty, even if it violated the first honor. It was the honor of obligation, because before your own honor came your family.

So when his Sisters had returned to the mother ship, Rubeus reached into the lining of his vest and removed the ruby that he had placed there just before he boarded the Black Moon mother ship to leave the future for the past.

The ruby was one of those known as a phoenix-blood ruby, infinitely rare and precious, named for their fiery color and the dark pulse of violet buried inside it like an ash-covered phoenix swooping back to life.

It was inside that phoenix-shaped darkness that Rubeus had been sealed so long ago, so long ago that he could not even recall what the Senshi who had sealed him had looked like. All he could remember, when Prince Diamond freed him, was the screaming, unending isolation, seeping through the cracks of his sanity like lava, hissing, burning, searing his mind away.

Rubeus had kept that ruby sewn inside his vest above his heart, a sometimes-cold, sometimes-hot lump there, where, he had vowed to himself, it could never, ever become a prison again.

But he had broken that vow. Just before the Black Moon ship left for the past all those months ago, one honor had compelled him to make the phoenix-blood ruby a prison once more.

And now the other honor was forcing him to release its captive.

L

A/N: In the _Naruto_anime, when Naruto and Sakura's teammate Sasuke is taken by evil ninja, Naruto makes "the promise of a lifetime" to Sakura to bring him back. The motif of what it means to be true to yourself and your "way on the ninja" recurs throughout the series. Naruto also has a habit of adding "Dattebayo" to the end of most of his sentences. Hopefully all the references didn't make the gang's conversation TOO confusing.

Oodles of foreshadowing in this chapter, in case you guys want to give me any of your guesses about what's going to happen. ^-^


	25. Chapter 25

A/N: Sorry for the wait, everyone! New STC character sketches and deleted scenes are now available at

.com/site/subjecttochangesailormoonfic/

(If that link doesn't come through, please go to Jade's profile page; it has the link.)

I think I've managed to keep it straight, but just in case, I decided I should note it. In an earlier chapter of this season, from what Serena says about her age and when she was born, this chapter takes place in the dying days of 2006. So, although I'm a little confused as to what I was thinking about the ages when I wrote that chapter (in my head, they're all a year older), that's what we're going with. You'll see in the chapter why this was important.

Also: it has occurred to me that if Darien can heal himself and if, before the Golden Crystal emerged from his body, he healed automatically, he would definitely not need glasses. However, I find a glasses-wearing Darien extremely hot. Therefore, unless a plot-related reason is found to explain this phenomenon later, I beg you all to ignore this small discrepancy and leave a review if you, like me, think Glasses-Wearing Darien is unbearably attractive.

As always, muchas gracias to Jade!

GORE AND LANGUAGE WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER.

Extra A/N: Please recall the scene from last chapter in which Mikai resents Serena for not saving Ami from Mercury and Serena begs him to tell her what's happened to Ami.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon or any other proper nouns in this chapter.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Twenty-Five: Secret Weapons

L

It was past five by the time everyone began to trickle out of Darien's apartment. Everyone, that was, except for Mikai.

He followed Darien into the kitchen as Asanuma cast a glance over his shoulder and shut Darien's apartment door behind him on his way out, and picked up an oven mitt as Darien went to the coffee maker.

"What else do you want to ask?" he said, picking at a burnt spot of fabric on the oven mitt. It seemed to him a strange thing to find on an oven mitt on Darien's' apartment. He'd never imagined Darien as the cooking type, much less the type to have let anything become so hot that it burned an oven mitt.

Darien glanced up from the mug of hours-old coffee he was pouring. "What makes you think I have anymore to ask?"

Mikai put the oven mitt down. "Because I came here expecting about five thousand questions, and you only asked, like, three." He pushed himself up to sit on the kitchen counter.

"The atmosphere already seemed supersaturated, if you know what I mean," said Darien briefly, glancing at the balcony's glass doors. Serena had managed to escape out the front door before he could say anything, the little minx, but he sensed Asanuma's presence accompanying her home.

"I get your drift. A cloudburst wouldn't have been the most convenient occurrence." Mikai swung the cabinet door beside his head open and shut, open and shut. "I think Serena's stronger than you give her credit for, though."

Darien's eyes snapped from the balcony to Mikai's relaxed face. "Don't talk to me about giving her due credit. Do you know how disgusting that was to watch?"

He knew from the guilty skitter of Mikai's dark eyes that the mechanic knew exactly to what he referred. It had nearly made Endymion stir inside him again, the sight of Serena prostrating herself before Mikai. "You're twenty years old. She's sixteen. You didn't look cool. You looked like a bully. And a stupid one at that. Suddenly you've found something to fight for and you get to be self-righteous and judge people? Judge yourself. While she's been keeping people from getting killed for the past two years, you've been lounging around in your garage figuring out the most efficient way to be lazy."

Mikai had realized the hypocrisy of his actions almost as soon as the blonde girl had prostrated herself before him, and he felt the guilt of it acutely enough still that he wanted Darien to make him feel worse, to exact some sort of vengeance for the girl. So he sat very still and let Darien rebuke him, and when Darien had finished talking, he still did not say anything, did not try to break the heaviness of the atmosphere.

Darien poured another cup of coffee and held his palm over it until the coffee inside began to bubble and steam. Then he handed it to Mikai. Mikai accepted it as the olive branch that it was, and they both sipped in silence for a few moments.

Then Darien set his mug down. "What's the extent of your powers?"

This was more like the questioning Mikai had expected. He hopped down from the counter, prickled by a feeling that he hadn't felt in a long time. After he had been adopted, when he did anything bad, the old lady who had adopted him never censured him. She just told him why it was wrong to do, and then she had moved on as though he hadn't done anything wrong. But he had always still been able to remember that he had done something to be ashamed of, and he knew that even though she pretended otherwise, she remembered, too, and he had always been eager to do something to make her forget the bad thing that he had done.

That was what he felt like now. He smiled a tight smile to himself and opened his backpack full of dirt.

Then he paused.

"Go ahead," said Darien, coming up behind him. "I'm going to have to vacuum up all the cookie crumbs anyway."

Mikai took out a fistful of plain black gardening soil, spread it on his palm, and showed it to Darien. Then he closed his hand in a fist, opened it, and a diamond winked out at them from inside a crust of brown rock.

"I got really excited at first," Mikai said. "Because, you know, they always teach you that it takes thousands of years to make diamonds, so I thought, dude, I can accelerate time! But then Merc – " He cut off abruptly, eyeing Darien as though unsure he should bring up the Senshi, then shrugged and continued, "Well, she told me, but I would have realized it anyway, that it's not time but the increased pressure, which is usually brought about by time depositing layers of new dirt upon the crust, that creates diamonds."

Darien leaned forward. Mikai handed him the diamond. As Darien's fingers closed around it, the brown rock crumbled from around the diamond as though it was no more than stubborn dirt.

Mikai looked on with interest. "Yeah, she said I shouldn't feel too special. Anything any of the Shittenou can do, you can do, too."

"I wondered about that," Darien murmured, pressing his index finger against the diamond's revealed face.

His eyes glowed for the briefest second, and the rough diamond split in two.

He handed one half back to Mikai. "Try to do that."

Mikai lifted the diamond up to his eye and frowned hard at the diamond. It changed color on the inside, a dark blur spreading inside the clear matrix, but it didn't split.

"Focus on the atoms," said Darien. "Remember that diamonds have face-centered cubic atomic packing. You don't need all the atoms; just the ones that are the centers of each cube are enough to create a plane. Do you have it?"

A few beads of perspiration glistening on his forehead beneath his gelled green hair Mikai nodded.

"Not yet, but when I say, remove the pressure from them. Just the center atoms. Ready…now."

The diamond fell neatly into two pieces, as though an invisible knife had sliced through it.

"Sweet!" exclaimed Mikai.

Darien almost smiled. Asanuma and Mikai both had the same attitude toward this whole Shittenou thing. The w_ho cares if I'm practically some guy's enslaved bodyguard, I can do magic!_ attitude.

His almost-smile became a grimace as he remembered the surges of terror and panic that he had felt from Asanuma and Motoki as they were frozen into the Sister's ice at the carnival. Asanuma had said nothing yet, and Darien had not said anything either, respecting his silence. But he had sensed a terror in the blond that day that before then he had only ever sensed in Serena: an ugly, eyeless snake of a terror whose origin he had never been able to decipher until he sensed it in Asanuma.

It was the terror born from the realization that you were going to die.

Maybe not today. Maybe not even soon. But someday.

Darien sat forward sharply. "We'll have to start brainstorming on future uses for this sort of thing," he said deliberately, narrowing his mind to the diamond and Mikai's powers and nothing else. "It's easier when you already know before you're in a battle what you can do with your powers, rather than coming up with things on the spot and possibly overreaching your capabilities."

He turned over the diamond half in his hand. A thought struck him.

"Wait," he said at the same time Mikai said, "Hey, Darien – "

Their eyes met, Darien's intent and Mikai's excited. The Shittenou grinned. "We _so_ just had the same thought."

"Give me a second." Darien reached into his subspace pocket and withdrew his cane. He pressed the hidden lever that released the blade inside it, then lifted the blade to his eyes to study it, running a finger across the edge. A line of red sprang up on his fingertip; he ignored it.

"Diamond," he said.

"Just along the edge," said Mikai, peering closely at the glinting blade. "I wouldn't have noticed if I didn't know how to sense it now." He looked up at Dare. "Mass production?"

"Mass production," confirmed Darien, replacing the blade in his pocket. Was this the answer? It seemed naïve to think that mere weapons could help protect his friends any better than the powers they currently had, and yet – he remembered what Rini had been holding the night she appeared.

"Sais," he said. "For Asanuma. And a sword for Serena."

"What about the hilts?" asked Mikai, already moving to the computer desk and grabbing a pen and some sheets of paper from the printer. "And diamond's no good for Motoki. It's not conductive. He'll need a metal – "

"There's an alloy," said Darien, crossing to his computer and tapping a key to bring it out of hibernation mode. He hadn't yet replaced the Braille keyboard, and suddenly he felt all over grateful: he could see, he was finding a way to protect his friends – "Look, here. In America, they added silicon to aluminum and magnesium. It's nearly as hard as diamond, and it'll conduct."

He could practically see Mikai's eyes light up with the image of Motoki waving around a weapon that spat lightning. "Excellent! Does he do kendo? He's got the build."

"Yeah, he did kendo in middle school," said Darien, already typing in a new search. He reached up and grabbed his dusty glasses from the shelf above the desk to plunk them on top of his nose. "Okay, write this down. Five percent silicon, fifty five percent aluminum…"

L

When Motoki and Lita had announced they were leaving and slipped out of Darien's apartment hand in hand, Serena had tumbled quickly after them. For although she was ninety percent certain she would have sensed if a youma or someone from the Black Moon came for Rini, an uneasiness itched at the back of her neck like a stiff shirt tag that refused to lie flat.

Asanuma followed her into the elevator, and he seemed just as jumpy as she did. For a minute Serena watched them both shifting from foot to foot in the elevator's reflective doors before she looked at his reflection's face. She found it looking back at her, and they both smiled a little.

"We're like little kids who have to go to the bathroom or something," said Asanuma, leaning his shoulder blades back against the wall. His feet didn't stop tapping, though.

"Where are you going?" Serena asked.

"Well, first, I'm gonna walk you home," said Asanuma. As Serena opened her mouth to say that she didn't need a bodyguard and Darien needed to stop being so smotheringly overprotective, Asanuma lifted a hand. "Down, girl, it wasn't Darien. Well, I mean, he probably didn't want you walking home alone, but you sneaked out while he went to get coffee."

Serena smiled guiltily, for this was true.

"I wanted to see Rini and thank her for the cookie," Asanuma continued. "I felt bad, during Christmas yesterday, realizing that I'm probably the person she's spent all her Christmases with, and I didn't even get her a present."

"Well," said Serena with a strange catch in her voice. She cleared her throat. "It's not you she's spent her Christmases with, exactly."

Asanuma gave a little smile at her attempt at comfort. "Yeah. But still."

The elevator reached the ground floor, and they stepped out, pulling their scarves up over their faces as they walked out of the heated lobby into the gusty winter wind.

"God, it got cold," mumbled Asanuma from behind his red scarf. "Let's run, Serena-chan."

Dubiously, Serena eyed her shoes, a rather slippery pair of suede Mary Janes, and then the icy sidewalk, but Asanuma had already broken into a jog down the pavement, so she followed suit.

The Tsukinos' house wasn't a horrible distance from Darien's apartment building, but by the time they reached it, Serena's lungs felt like two blocks of ice in her chest. She grabbed onto the porch rails and clung to them for support as Asanuma laughed and bounded up the porch stairs – even if her lungs were frozen solid now, she'd beaten him – to ring the doorbell.

She flapped her hand at him and handed him the keys instead. His hands were warm as oven mitts, and she realized that he must have cheated to keep warm. She made a face at him as he unlocked the door. But as they scrambled through the front door into the warmth, her glower became a sigh of delighted relief.

"I'm home!" she called once her teeth stopped chattering. She kicked off her shoes and scarf –

"And I smell brownies!" she exclaimed, sprinting for the kitchen.

She stopped so suddenly in the kitchen doorway that Asanuma, who had been hot on her heels, ran into her and sent her stumbling into the kitchen.

"Oops, sorry," he said, but Serena exclaimed, "_Buji_? I didn't know you were coming over today!"

"Uh, hi, nee-chan," said Buji distractedly. He was glaring hard at the chess board on the table in front of him.

He reached forward and began to move a bishop, but a small smile lifted Rini's lips, and upon seeing it, Buji made an exclamation and quickly yanked the piece back.

The smile fell from Rini's lips. "Would you just MOVE already?"

Serena laughed and moved past the two to the counter for the warm brownies whose tantalizing aroma she had detected as soon as she stepped inside the house with Asanuma. As she handed one to Asanuma, then picked one up and stuffed it in her own mouth, she gave in to the equally tantalizing urge to ruffle Buji's dark curls.

Buji yanked away from her as hastily as he had yanked away the chess bishop, but not before Serena's fingers encountered the bumps as big as goose eggs on his scalp beneath his curls.

"Buji…" She swallowed the suddenly muddy-tasting brownie. "Are those bumps from…"

Buji shrugged, not looking at her. "Yeah, I guess."

Serena bit her lip. "Do they hurt? Do you need some aspirin?" How easily she had forgotten that people who were not Senshi suffered in youma attacks, too! And their wounds did not automatically heal after the battle was done. Had she thought even once yesterday or this morning of the people who were still in the hospital from the Black Moon attack on the festival? And Buji's injuries were squarely her fault, for she had let him run off back into the thick of the youma fight so that she and Rini could transform. How easily he could have been paralyzed, or blinded, or even _killed_ in a battle that had nothing to do with him…

"I'm fine!" Buji's voice was loud, his curls quivering as he glared at the chessboard. He shrugged off the hand that Asanuma had placed on his shoulder. "They'll be gone soon."

Serena didn't know what to say. She felt –

"Bumpy or not, your head's still ugly," said Rini.

Buji squawked, head flying up. "At least mine doesn't have meatballs on top of it!"

"At least mine has something _inside_ it."

"What, spaghetti to go with the meatballs?"

"Okay, okay, break it up!" Asanuma stepped in authoritatively, lifting his hands. "You guys are making me hungry."

"Would you like to stay for supper, Asanuma-kun?" Ikuko poked her head into the kitchen. "We're having lasagna, if you're craving Italian.

"Ah," faltered Asanuma, looking surprised. He knew that Tsukino-san knew he existed, since he'd been over to Serena's house with the gang a handful of times, but he hadn't been aware she knew his name. Or thought that she would want a random teenage boy who wasn't Darien – or Motoki, he mentally added, remembering that Motoki and Serena's families had known each other since the two were young – to stay and eat with her family.

"Kenji's going to be late again, and Buji-kun and Mayuko are already going to eat with us," said Ikuko airily.

"Well," said Asanuma, glancing now at Rini. "If it's not any trouble – "

"None at all!" said Tsukino-san, hefting a laundry basket on her hip. "As long as your parents won't mind us stealing you for an evening."

He felt his face harden a little and quickly ironed it back out. "Not at all," he said. Then he looked around. "But I insist on taking care of dessert. Anyone want to come with me to the supermarket to pick up something scrumptious?"

"I'm too stuffed with brownies to move," said Serena, and it was true that the stack of brownies on the counter was considerably shorter than it had been when they first entered the kitchen.

"Um, Buji," she said then. "I'm trying to draw a picture of Naruto for class, but he keeps looking like a girl. Do you think you could help me?"

"Sure!" said Buji, hopping down from his chair, looking all too glad to escape the inevitable chess defeat he faced from Rini.

"Will _you_go with me, Rini?" Asanuma made a pouty face. "I always get scared when I have to walk past a manhole alone. What if the Ninja Turtles jump out and kidnap me?"

"I'm sure even imaginary superheroes have better things to do with their time than kidnap you," Rini said, but she stood up and began to put away the chess set. "Give me a second."

"Before you go, Rini – " Serena's tone was meaningful, and Asanuma looked up. He could have sworn that she winked at Rini. But that didn't make sense. Could Serena even wink? It had taken her weeks to finally be able to lift her eyebrows like Darien. "Don't forget your mittens. They're under your pillow."

Before Asanuma could question why she kept their mittens under her pillow, Rini disappeared up the stairs. As Buji and Serena followed her at a much slower pace, Asanuma went back to the front door, wrapping his scarf around his neck. He saw Tsukino-san coming into the living room with another basket of clothes.

"I'm taking Rini to the grocery store with me real quick, Tsukino-san, if that's okay," he said, belatedly realizing that he sort of needed her permission. Appealing to parental authority wasn't something he was extremely used to at his house, what with his parents rarely being home. And, since their disapproval was usually an automatic given, he was used to going ahead and doing what he wanted anyway, even if only to make them angrier.

"As long as you promise to keep her safe." Tsukino-san smiled up at him. "But I know you will." She patted his cheek and continued on to the laundry room.

Rini came hurrying back into the living room, then, a small white knapsack over her shoulder. She was bundled up like an Eskimo. Asanuma detected Serena's handiwork in the lopsided bow into which the drawstring of Rini's hood had been tied beneath her chin.

"Ready?" he said.

She nodded, ducking beneath his arm as he held the front door open, only a crack in order to keep too much cold from blowing in.

By the time they were three blocks from the Tsukinos' house, Asanuma was fervently wishing that he had brought his car. It was one thing for himself and Serena to brave the icy cold, but quite another for a six year-old to have to walk through it. Especially because the temperature seemed to have dropped quite a bit since he and Serena were outside.

He pulled down his scarf a bit to warn Rini: "Hey, I'm gonna carry you." He placed his hands awkwardly under her arms, hefting her up clumsily. He hadn't held a kid since his little sister, and he'd been about twelve then and her maybe three, not nearly as long and sharp-elbowed as Rini.

"I can walk!" Rini fought against his arms for a moment. But she felt like a popsicle even through his four layers of shirts and jackets, so he held her firmly even though those sharp elbows were digging quite uncomfortable into his sternum, and summoned heat to his arms and chest the same way he had to keep warm while racing Serena.

"Look," he said into her hair, which was in his face and tickling his nose. "Frostbite's not the Christmas present I was planning to give you, kiddo."

Her struggling stopped. "You got me a present?"

"Well," he said. "No." He felt her shoulder sag, and he felt like giving her a hug. There was something special – slightly sadistic through it might be – in being able to affect someone that much. Having someone care enough about you and what you did to be able to disappoint them – or to make them happy. "I _made_ you one."

He felt her press her face against his scarf, and this time he did hug her. She was so small. Even Serena didn't feel this fragile. "Sorry it's late."

"You didn't have to get me anything," she said – almost grumbled. She was so like Darien – in his ear. "You don't even know me, really."

"But I want to know you," he said honestly. Then, flippantly, because he had felt her stiffen, he continued, "Besides, if my future self's put up with you for six years, he must like you. And I trust my future self's taste to be almost as good as mine."

If anything, she only stiffened further. But it might have been because they were ducking into the supermarket just then, into the brightly-lit warmth.

He set her down, and she looked up at him, pulling her scarf down from over her mouth. It was a fluffy pink monstrosity: again, definitely picked by Serena.

"You don't have good taste, though," she said. "You think pineapple crumbles actually tastes good."

"Oho! Those are fighting words!" Asanuma grabbed her back up again, slinging her this time like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder. He headed for the bakery section as she kicked at him. "Just for that we're getting pineapple crumble for desert instead of chocolate tiramisu."

"No!" Rini wailed, sounding remarkably like Serena.

He chortled, grinning at the people shooting him raised brows from behind their shopping carts. "Kid throwing a temper tantrum, folks, nothing to worry about."

"I am NOT throwing a temper tantrum," retorted Rini from somewhere around his twelfth vertebra. "I'm expressing my dissent, and you're being dictatorial. _My_Asanuma always let us play rock paper scissors to figure out who got to pick dessert."

"Oh?" said Asanuma, more surprised by the sudden prick of jealousy he felt toward his own future self than by the little tidbit of information Rini had revealed about her life in the future. "Well, I'll do better than that. We'll buy TWO desserts! You choose the one you want to eat, and I'll choose the one I want to eat." He set her down in front of the island of bakery goods.

She regarded him suspiciously. "What about the one everyone else wants to eat?"

"Rini, Rini, Rini." Asanuma shook his head. "You've been hanging around our altruistic friend Serena for too long. This is a dog-eat-dog world. Whoever comes to the grocery store picks out what they want to eat. If you want to eat what you want, you come with Asanuma to the grocery store and protect him from Ninja Turtles. Now, choose."

He picked up a prettily decorated package and waited for Rini to do the same. She glanced at him, then went around to the other side of the island. After a minute, she came back, holding a package.

He leaned over to see. "What'd ya get?"

She snatched it out of his sight. "What did YOU get?"

They exchanged a glance, then snatched the packages from each other.

Asanuma snorted and grinned.

Rini looked up at him, rolling her eyes. "Who's been hanging around Serena too much now?"

"This was supposed to be a lesson in selflessness. My first lesson as a parental figure!" With a dramatic sigh, Asanuma handed back to her the pineapple crumble that she had picked out and took back from her the chocolate tiramisu he had picked out. "But it appears that you already have a heart of gold, and my alchemy is unneeded. Alas."

When they had checked out and walked to the store's entrance, Asanuma stuffing his change back into his pocket, they stopped; glanced at the darkness that had fallen outside; glanced at the flashing lights that had just pulled into the bus stop at the end of the shopping plaza; and then glanced at each other.

"Bus?" said Asanuma.

"Bus," said Rini.

He handed her the bag, grabbed her up again, and took off at a run down the plaza for the bus. He felt Rini being jolted up and down like a milkshake in Motoki's milkshake-shaker but he heard her laughing, too, bubbling laughs that burst and popped like the time he'd tickled her, and when he skidded to a stop at the just-closing bus doors, he was laughing, too.

The bus driver gave him a weird look as he sighed and reopened the doors, but Asanuma just crammed a five into the fare slot and collapsed into a seat near the back, still laughing.

This laughter was cut off by a sudden gasp from Rini as she slid from his lap into the seat beside him.

"What?" He reached into his pocket for his Shittenou stone, looking down at her.

But she was holding the package of pineapple crumble in her hands, glaring down at it petulantly. "It fell upside down while we were running," she said. "Now it's all messed-up…"

"Hey, that's okay. The good thing about pineapple crumble is that it already looks so much like barf, when it gets messed-up, no one notices." Asanuma sighed nostalgically. "I never would've gotten through eighth-grade Home Ec if not for the naturally barfy appearance of pineapple crumble."

Rini looked up at him with some interest in her dark blue eyes. "Really?" she said. "You cook pretty well in my time. You have a whole box full of recipes."

Asanuma considered this. "They're probably Toki's," he said. "He has an index card box full of recipes in his locker. Purple plastic, about this big?" He made a rectangle with his hands.

Rini nodded slowly. "Yeah."

It was a strange feeling, to think of his future self. Clearly, he was the only one still left in Tokyo…and he had Toki's treasured recipes…

Did that mean that Toki was dead?

Asanuma exhaled, slowly. No. No, he was probably away where everyone else was. Fighting Chaos.

But why had he, Asanuma, been left behind? Why him and not someone else, someone who could cook, like Motoki or Lita, or who was better with kids, like Serena –

"Here."

Something was shoved into his lap. He blinked out of his morbid thoughts and looked down at Rini, his hands closing around the tissue paper-swaddled object in his lap. She had the little white knapsack in her own lap; her arms crossed tightly around it.

"Where'd you get that?" he asked her.

She looked at him, confused, and then realized he meant the knapsack. She looked down at it. "Serena gave it to me for Christmas. For until I get a Subspace Pocket," she said.

Asanuma looked at it harder, pushing, pushing at his memory, until it finally clicked, and he realized why he had recognized the knapsack. "It used to be Serena's."

Rini's arms tightened around it. "It did?" Her voice was suddenly unreadable.

"Yup. She used to carry it around everywhere. Oh, man, it must've been…oh, back in sophomore year, I guess. She was a freshman then. I didn't know her that well, but I remember the bag…" He frowned as he realized. "I guess she must have stopped carrying it about the same time she became Sailor Moon, actually – "

He cut himself off, realizing that maybe Rini wouldn't appreciate finding out that her present wasn't brand-new but rather a hand-me-down.

Although from the way she still held it tightly, he didn't really think so.

He looked down at the package in his hands again, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the present he had made for her. It wasn't very well-wrapped: he'd only made it yesterday, when he realized that he hadn't gotten her a present, and, with all stores being closed and not wanting to wrap it in scraps of the glossy paper his parents had paid for the department store to wrap the family's presents, he'd used some of the paint-spattered newspaper that carpeted his bedroom floor around his easel and tied it with clay-cutter's twine.

Rini stared at it for a minute, touching the spots of dried paint, and he felt self-conscious and guilty again. Then she peeked up at him from beneath her bangs, and the look in her eyes wasn't disappointed or disdainful or resentful. It seemed…surprised? Awed? Confused?

She untied the butterfly knot he'd used on the twine with an experienced twist of her fingers , not tearing the newspaper, then gently pulled back the newspaper, like pulling back the petals of a flower bud to reveal the tiny snow globe inside.

Asanuma watched her stare at it. Her face wore a look of shock that seemed almost ominous to him, and he looked back at the gift he'd made, trying to figure out what about it could possibly have shocked her so. It was a tiny snow globe made out of one of the baby food jars that he'd begun to stockpile for his spring sculpture project. He had painstakingly, out of fast-drying clay and with several dozen toothpicks – constructed and painted a tiny miniature of Rini in a white Senshi fuku. Then he'd carved out about a hundred tiny pieces of clay, each half the size of a grain of dried rice, to look like marshmallows and act like the snow in the globe. Then he'd glued a curved strip of clay, like a coffee mug's handle, to the side of the jar, and glued another glob of it at the top of the snow globe and bored a hole through it so that it could be strung and used as an ornament for a Christmas tree. Then he'd used more clay to cover the jar's lid with white clay, forming the snow globe's base. On it he'd painted, in chocolate brown calligraphy that had taken him three hours, _Sailor Mini-Marshmallow, Christmas 2008_.

It was possibly the least ominous snow globe he'd ever seen. It was also possibly the weirdest, which was understandable considering that he had come up with the idea at two o'clock in the morning and worked on it until four o'clock this morning, but still, not enough to make her – cry? Was she _crying_?

"I – you don't have to take it – here, look, I'll get rid of it," said Asanuma with no small amount of alarm, reaching out to take it from her hands and stuff it back in his jacket pocket so that he could throw it out of his second-story window when he got home.

But she snatched it away from his seeking fingers, holding it tight. "No!" She sucked in a sniffly breath and swiped her sleeve across her face. "It's mine. You gave it to me."

"But…" Asanuma lowered his hand. "Do you like it?"

Rini only nodded jerkily, her bangs over her eyes so he couldn't see them, only the wet streaks on her cheeks.

"So…" Asanuma was still off-balance. He glanced out the frost-rimed bus windows and realized that they had long ago missed their stop. They would have to wait out another round of the bus route until it came back to their stop. "Should I open mine?"

She nodded again.

As he undid the meticulous wrapping, a disorienting sense of déjà vu crawled across him. The last of the paper fell away, and he stared down at the ridiculously chubby figurine painted red and black and yellow on the top over a laughably large, cherry-red mouth.

"It's not very well-made," said Rini's voice. "I thought I could do it better than – " She broke off. "Anyway, the cookie was better, sorry."

Asanuma looped his finger through the red ribbon that was strung through a hole in his figurine doppelganger's head. A laugh was clawing at the corners of his mouth. "No, no, it's a very well-made voodoo doll! And here I was thinking all those headaches were from my allergies!"

Grinning, he looked up in time to catch a glare from Rini. She shot a hand out to pluck the ornament back from him. He yanked it up over his head, out of her reach. "Uh-uh. It's mine."

"You don't like it!"

"I didn't say that." Asanuma held the miniature of himself tightly in his hand. "I was joking around. I love it. No one's ever made me something like this before."

"By like this, you mean no one's ever made you something this ugly." Rini crossed her arms over her knapsack and looked out the window. She seemed genuinely depressed.

"So what if I'm too chubby and it looks like I'm wearing lipstick?" Asanuma turned the figurine over in his hand, studying it. "Unless – " He feigned a gasp. "Do I look like this in the future? Is this what I become?"

Watching Rini's profile from the corner of his eye, he saw a corner of her mouth tug up. "Yes," she said.

Asanuma squawked and elbowed her. "I do not!"

"You're humungous," she said. "Morbidly obese. You can't even leave the house. You have to roll on your stomach to get to the kitchen."

"It's because I become such an amazing cook." Asanuma spread his arms out. "I just can't eating all my yummy creations. Do I make delicious pineapple crumble?"

"There's no such thing," Rini said, and grinned, pleased with her insult.

"A few months ago I would've said there was no such thing as a Rini grin." Asanuma nudged the dimple in her cheek with a gentle knuckle. "But now I'm looking at one."

Rini's lips compressed. She hugged her knapsack tight and, then, hesitantly, burrowed her head against his arm.

And for some reason, she mumbled against it, "I'm sorry."

L

Michiru sat on the sofa with her hands clasped in her lap. She felt Haruka throwing curious glances at her, but she said nothing, watching the second hand click slowly on the clock that hung above the television.

It had gone around three times before Pluto's blood-red eyes appeared in the glass. Her head emerged slowly from it until she regarded Michiru and Haruka like a deer-head mounted on the wall.

"You called?" Her voice was hoarse.

Michiru did not comment on that, or the deep circles beneath Pluto's eyes. "Pluto, I believe that Haruka's memory block needs to be reinforced."

Pluto's eyes flicked to Haruka, who had rocked forward to look at Michiru as though she'd never seen her before.

"What?"

Pluto turned back toward Michiru. "Explain."

"When I was in the classroom at the school several days ago, waiting for Haruka to leave with Ser – with Sailor Moon's civilian form," Michiru corrected herself. "I felt a shift in her aura." She deliberately ignored the surprise that she saw filtering across Haruka's face; she had held off this information precisely so that she could delay the fear for Haruka, at least until after Christmas.

"It very much resembled the same sensation of disturbed waters that I registered when Rei required reinforcing for her memory block. I went outside to stop Haruka from making any possible reprehensible actions and found her looking very intently but blankly at Sailor Moon. I called Haruka by name several times, but neither my voice nor her name elicited a response. I was only able to draw her back to awareness by touching her aura with mine."

"I see." Pluto's dark face was grave. "And it has been several days."

Michiru bowed her head, prepared for the censure that was forthcoming. "I apologize, Pluto. It should have been brought to your attention at once."

"Yes," said Pluto darkly. "You withheld this information from me in order to protect Haruka, and that is a violation of your duty to the princess. You must act only for her. Not for your fellow Senshi." Her eyes darkened; even the circles beneath her eyes seemed to darken. For a second, the most ridiculous and impossible certainty lodged itself in Michiru's mind: Pluto was about to cry.

Then the dark-skinned Senshi blinked and pinned them on her gaze again, and the vulnerability was gone.

Still looking at them sharply, Pluto barked, "Mercury!"

Barely a handful of seconds passed before the temperature of the room dropped, and Sailor Mercury stepped out of thin air into the room. Michiru watched the faint feathers on the heels of her boots fade.

"Yes, My Lady Pluto?"

"We have a problem," said Pluto, still not removing her gaze from the two Outer Senshi. "Haruka's flash-form succeeded in briefly re-emerging."

Michiru had had little interaction with the Mercurian Senshi, but she felt a strange tension in the vapor molecules around her, a tight control

"We foresaw such a possibility, My Lady. If Endymion's flash form was resurfacing and if it triggered Serenity's, and if Haruka then came into close contact with Serenity's reincarnation – "

"_If_these things happened, I would have seen them in the mirrors." Pluto's voice was slow and sharp; she continued to stare hard at Haruka.

The vapor molecules nearly sang with tension. "Then this could be encouraging news, my lady. If you have not seen it in your mirrors, then the reincarnations must have been in close proximity to Saturn's reincarnation when the events occurred, and she blocked them from your sight."

"_Do not condescend to me_!" Pluto's head spun at last to face Mercury. "One or more of my mirrors is missing. Endymion can now see. The third Shittenou has joined them – you have violated the taboo, you have stolen mirrors from the Time Plane, betrayed the princess – "

"You hallucinate, Pluto." Mercury's voice was smooth, as though to soothe the older Senshi, but an icy current flowed within it. "How could you know these things if not from your mirrors? You must have seen them in your mirrors, for I have not told them to you, and Chronos' Laws forbid you from travelling outside the time plane."

Confusion brushed Michiru like butterfly wings. "But Pluto came out to restore Rei's mind-block – "

"Silence, Neptune!"

But the damage was already done. Mercury's eyes glinted as they watched Pluto from behind her visor. "Does she speak truly, Pluto?"

Pluto's whole visage was shaking with rage as she met Mercury's eyes. Realization filtered slowly across her features, stilling them.

"You," she began. Her voice tremored as much as her face. "You – even if I knew that your actions circumvented mine, I believed that they were at least were motivated by a desire to protect the princess. But you have been working against me – you are trying to turn them – "

Her eyes flashed, bloody red, and suddenly Mercury's eyes darkened behind her visor.

The blue fuku flickered – Mercury cried out, throwing up a hand, cringing back.

Then she vanished.

A feather fluttered slowly to the carpet. Michiru watched it with horrified eyes, barely daring to move. Her hand was a vise around Haruka's fingers.

But Haruka was rising to her feet. "So," she began aggressively.

But now Pluto turned her eyes to her. They flashed crimson again, and Haruka went still. A heavy wind engulfed her, tearing Michiru's hand from hers, and when it faded, Michiru saw, with watering eyes, that her hair had lightened to an almost colorless fairness, her skin to near-transparence beneath her Senshi fuku.

"Find Mars," ordered Pluto's voice, and Haruka blurred from the room without a glance at Michiru.

Michiru was nearly frozen to the sofa now, as though Mercury had used her for target practice. Her heart screamed after Haruka, but she could feel nothing, _nothing_of her Haruka in that colorless Senshi.

"Who am I?" said Sailor Pluto's head. Its eyes bored into her.

Michiru swallowed. Her throat was dry. "S-Sailor Pluto."

"Who are you?"

Michiru didn't know. She didn't know anymore, what did Pluto want her to answer; if she said Michiru, then she might turn her into Neptune as she had turned Haruka into Uranus, and then –

"You are who the princess needs you to be," said Pluto's head. "Always. For now, you may remain Michiru. And when Uranus returns, she will be Haruka. But if you defy me – if you betray our princess as Mercury has, then Michiru and Haruka will be swallowed. Do you understand?"

Michiru nodded around the terror that had hardened like coral in her throat.

L

The mansion that Senator Takumi Hino currently inhabited was not the one in which Rei had spent part of her childhood. That three-storied dwelling had been two stories and two cars in the garage smaller than this monstrous construction with its kilometer-long driveway and all-encompassing, bush-bordered, ornately wrought metal fence. She could still remember the down that endless driveway, still able to feel where Asanuma's warm fingers had lightly held her waist while they danced, still able to feel the tight nausea as her father told her that she, not her mother, should have died.

Standing on the sidewalk, under a conveniently broken streetlight, Rei twisted her shoulders. She felt her should blade strain against the stretchy fabric of the Senshi fuku that hugged her body. She worked her ankle for a second, then slammed her foot down, hard, on the pavement.

The heel snapped off. She heard if fly off into the darkness. Mercury would have scolded her for leaving behind evidence. Rei felt too uneasy to care.

She repeated the process with her other foot so that she stood in flats instead of heels. Then she took a step closer to the high fence and crouched.

She jumped.

The cold night air flew through her cropped hair as she cut through the air above the fence's spires. She inhaled it, let it slice into her throat. Then, twisting, she landed, hands splayed across the frost-stiffened grass.

In the near-freezing temperatures of the night, it was easy for her to detect the hot presences of three guards outside. One sat still, enclosed in a cocoon of warmth: the guardhouse as the fence's gate. Two others patrolled the circumference of the fence, puffing out gusts of warmth, one briskly, one briskly, one sluggishly. The brisk one, as Rei's luck would have it, was nearing her position although he had been at the other end of the property when she had arrived.

No matter. Rei broke into a silent run, melting the condensation on the grass as she ran so that it would not make sound as she sprinted across it. She passed beneath several sprawling trees, though a small garden with a koi pond, past a tennis court and then a screened-in swimming pool

Without breaking her stride, she caught the screen with her fingertips and scrambled like a spider up its expanse, swinging herself up onto the screening's peaked roof. Then, as she felt the screen bounce tentatively beneath her, she sprang from it to the balcony that jutted out from the house like a lip pouting petulantly at the pool.

She had miscalculated: her leap was the tiniest bit short. The soles of her shoes slapped down on the balcony's broad stone rail, then she swayed, teetering backward. She fell even further backward as she scrambled to grab the rail with her hands, her feet curled inside her shoes to get their own grip on the cold, too-broad rail.

Her gloved hands grabbed the rail and clung. She wobbled for a moment before her body stilled. She breathed a sigh of relief, a little white cloud billowing from her mouth like a ghost. Finally letting her shoulders relax, she looked up.

A white skull stared at her from behind the balcony's glass-paned French doors.

Rei's hands flinch open on the railing. Her legs trembled. Her feet slipped backward. She felt these things as though from within a block of Mercury's ice, numb and unable to do anything to stop what she was witnessing. The cloudy night stretched over her eyes; the wind combed icy fingers through her hair – and cold fingers that did not belong to the wind closed around her wrist.

Suddenly there was a sucking sensation, a strange pull that Rei felt as though it was a piece of cloth being pulled from where it had been wadded-up and crammed behind her eyeballs. Her arm socket flared in protest. Then she pitched forward, scraping her knees on the balcony's rough stucco floor.

She threw out a gloved hand to catch herself, too late, and summoned a ball of fire to see by in the other, and looked up.

A young girl, so black-haired and white-skinned that Rei could have mistaken her for a ghost of her own younger self, stood next to her.

As she stared at her, Rei still felt that strange pulling from behind her eyes. And with it a strange sense of fear – of a crazed panic to run, run, run, like a gazelle fleeing a lion, run before it gets you. Rei tried to ignore it, to push it to the side, but her feeling of vulnerability, of powerlessness, was amplified when she realized, looking at the girl from the corner of her eye, that the younger teen was a void in her second sight, only a strange whitish haze blurring her edges. While other people, when Rei studied them with her Sight, would melt and mold and morph into what they had been, what they would be, when Rei let her Sight linger on this girl, the only thing she became was that hazy white skeleton.

Mercury had not warned her that Sailor Saturn's reincarnation would be like this.

"I scared you," said the girl suddenly. Her name was Hotaru Tomoe, Rei recalled from Mercury's briefing. "Sorry."

"I'm the one who landed on your balcony in the middle of the night," said Rei shortly. Voluntary apologies made her suspicious. "I don't see what you have to apologize for."

"I'm sorry," said the girl again. She looked supremely uncomfortable, now that Rei looked at her through her normal vision, rather than with her Sight. Almost as if she was about to throw up. Her hands kept pulling at her collar – and then she thrust her arms out in front of her, extended straight out with her wrists together, as though she was a criminal presenting herself to an officer for arrest.

"It's not his fault," said the girl, a little wildly. Her eyes stared up into Rei's, a mixture of fear and guilt and defiance. "Don't – please don't kill him. He just wants to bring my mom back."

Rei had no idea what the girl was talking about. She thought resentfully of Mercury again, of all that she had neglected to include in her briefing.

"I'm not here to arrest you," Rei said, very shortly, even more shortly than before, for suddenly the back of her neck had begun to prickle, the colors of her visions beginning to grow a little brighter, as they always did when her Sight wanted her to pay attention. "I'm here to kidnap you – "

She realized, at the same moment that a sudden wind roared onto the balcony and spat the ball of fire in her hand through the open French doors, that she had completely forgotten to shield her aura.

Cursing herself for being such an idiotic ass, Rei closed her fist on the fire still burning in her hand. She threw herself over Saturn's reincarnation and threw up her arm to block the hand that came yanking down to grab the girl. She shoved the arm away, lunging out of her crouch with a spinning kick. She felt her bare shin connect with a rib and heard a throaty gush of air. Her attacker stumbled backward and slumped against the balcony rail, giving Rei enough time to snatch a glance – and see that her attacker was Sailor Uranus.

Rei's bones seemed to evaporate inside her, leaving her quivering like gelatin. Uranus. Not Haruka. Her aura was like Mercury's had been, smooth as marble, hard and unagitated.

This was Uranus's flash-form.

Rei felt, with the same detachment as when she had been falling backward off the balcony, her throat sealing up with terror, and felt Uranus's aura building to shoot an attack at her. She stood, unmoving, as though her feed had been nailed to the stucco.

Uranus's blizzard of sharp winds tore through her, slicing through her skin and the air alike to sail through the doors behind her. Rei felt the fire crackling in the girl's bedroom roar up and become a hissing blaze. She snatched at them with her aura, yanked them down –

"Don't get in my way, Terran," said the Senshi in a voice that was Haruka's but not. The look on her face was too serious, not sly enough, to be Haruka's. "Fight her, Mars – "

Blood dripped into Rei's eye. The salt stung fiercely. It made Rei flinch – into motion, slapping her hands together and yanking them apart in a motion so violent that it ripped through the air molecules. A bow of fire roared to life, a long arrow of flame eating its way to nestle its fiery fletches in Rei's fingers and its head in the hollow in Uranus's throat, all in one lightning-fast second.

Uranus froze. Her nearly colorless eyes flicked down to the flame millimeters from her throat. Perspiration glistened on her upper lip.

But she curved her lips in a smile. "Do you have none of Mars' memories, Terran? I'm Senshi. Any wound you inflict on me will only heal."

She twitched, as though to feint forward. Rei's flame-arrow darted out, like a snake's tongue, to follow her throat. The taller Senshi let out a little laugh.

"I may not have Mars' memories," said Rei, "but I know that even Senshi healing powers don't work on spirit-fire wounds."

Uranus' tongue licked the sweat from her upper lip. She swallowed, pulse jumping so close to the fire that the smell of burned hair began to fill the night air.

"You don't understand what you're doing. Mercury's a traitor. She's not acting for the princess. That Terran is _Saturn_ – "

"Shut up." Rei knew that Uranus knew what her words were doing, and she didn't want to let her see that it was working. "Let Haruka out."

But Uranus had already seen. Her lips began to curve in a smile again. "Just try and fight, Terran. None of you weaklings are a match for us." Her voice rose into a shout. "Mars! _Senshi of Mars, your princess is endangered _– "

Inside Rei, Mars lunged. Rei cried out. The arrow at Uranus' throat trembled and sputtered. Rei gasped and panted, wrestling, struggling, as flames seared at her, like fingers grabbing and digging –

With another cry, she clawed free of her transformation. Her fuku melted into jeans and a shirt; the arrow dimmed and faltered before struggling back to life, weaker than before. But Rei had escaped Mars' flash-form. She panted hard, the terror of her near escape slicing through her like the pain of icy water on an exposed nerve.

Aware now of the terrible power they held, she kept her eyes from Uranus' and stared at the beads of sweat still trickling down the other Senshi's throat instead.

At that moment, a voice shouted out behind her.

Rei's pulse leapt nearly out of her mouth. Even over the crackle and hiss of the fire consuming the bedroom, she could recognize that voice.

"Tomoe!" came the shout again.

"Look at that," whispered Uranus. Her voice was a twisted imitation of Haruka's, even her face had almost that same sly grin. "Daddy's come to get you, little Terran-chan."

Her psyche was too exposed already, vulnerable like that raw nerve; the memories howled into her.

_"You'll be whatever I want you to be. Be ready to go, Rei, or I will be forced to do something you don't want me to do."_

_"I said nod if you understand me!"_

_"God, I wish – "_

"What the hell's going on here?" His voice was closer: he was approaching. Rei's muscles began to tremble as she held the arrow and bow.

"You wanted him to burn in hell, didn't you?" Eyes alight, Uranus made a motion with her hand. Wind howled up. Rei felt the fire in the room behind her lunge out of her control –

She snapped down her bow and released the arrow.

The scent of charred flesh spiked in the air, and Uranus's body was tumbling backwards over the balcony railing, carried by the arrow's momentum.

Rei blinked against the smoke that curled from her fingertips and billowed out of the bedroom. Throwing a glance at the Tomoe girl to make sure she was staying put out on the balcony, Rei crept through the arch of flames that were all that was left of the wooden French doors.

Her father was crouched only about a meter inside, coughing violently. Glowing embers showered from the ceiling and spangled his dark silk bathrobe like angry constellations.

_"Your mother's not here to baby you anymore. I don't plan to put up with any of your juvenile tantrums. You're what, eleven now?"_

_"Nine._

_"Nine. Still old enough to be held accountable for your own actions."_

Rei grabbed him under the arms with iron fingers and dragged him out onto the balcony. She dumped him on the stucco floor.

"If you run, there are worse things waiting for you than me," she told the Tomoe girl, who watched her wide eyes.

Rei picked her up, half over her shoulder, teeth gritted at the weight, and transformed. She jumped to the balcony railing, then to the ground. She sensed Uranus nowhere, and wondered briefly what she would have done if her shot had been fatal. Would Haruka have died, too?

"Don't run," she said again to the girl, releasing her on the ground, and crawled back up the pool cage to the balcony. She stopped there, on the railing, crouched like a predator, watching.

Hino had regained consciousness now. Coughing and with streaming eyes, he looked up at her from where he had crouched to stay beneath the smoke billowing from the bedroom.

In the distance, sirens wailed.

_"She should've been the one who lived that day, not you."_

Rei lowered one foot to the balcony floor. Then the other. She lifted her arm. A thin stream of fire coiled around it, slithering down it like a snake until it reached her fist and stiffened there into an arrow of flame.

"I can kill you."

The words were hers, but they surprised her. She listened to them hovering in the air, like a smoky afterimage. It seemed impossible that something she had wanted for so long was finally in her reach. She said it again, as though to convince herself, or to revel in their meaning: "I can kill you."

Then, as it sank in it last – this was real, this was really him, at her mercy, that _she could kill him_ – the wonder drained from her eyes, as she slid on the same, disaffected mask that he had worn for all those years, and she looked down at him and heard herself say coldly, "Nod if you understand me."

He nodded. It was a fast nod, a vigorous ducking of the head, and it lit a fury inside her. She wanted him to defy her as she had tried to defy him. She wanted him to fight. To make her hate him as an opponent, not as a groveling, pathetic – she heard something inside her spit the word – _Terran_.

The fire arrow died in her fingers.

With an angry cry, she slapped her closed fist against the side of his head. He crumpled to the floor and lay still, but she could still sense his hot pulse throbbing, sour and foul and too-hot like the saliva that filled her mouth when she needed to throw up, and she wanted _so badly_ to end it –

Hot salty tears dripped into her mouth as she gripped his unconscious body under the arms and jumped with it to the ground. She dropped it there, beside a bougainvillea bush, and another sound escaped her, strangled and agonized and too loud. She felt warm presences rushing toward them, heard sirens wailing closer.

The hazy white skeleton peeked out from behind a tree.

Rei went to it and told it to climb on her back. When its arms and legs were secured around her, she jumped into the trees. She did not look down at the skeletal hands that she knew she would see locked around her throat, hanging over her heart. She did not look back at the burning house and flashing ambulance lights.

She only looked ahead.

L

The hours passed like contractions, painful and close together with nothing to show for them. Rubeus needed the Shittenou conscious, but two days had passed since he had released him from the ruby, and the Terran hadn't stirred a centimeter.

He wasn't _dead_. Dark blackish patches had begun to spread beneath his fingertips and at his earlobes, and the smell of decay weighted the air, but when Rubeus touched his finger to the Shittenou's throat, beneath the torn, blood-caked collar, a thready pulse still leapt sporadically there, like a drowning man's hand clawing for the surface.

Rubeus had put the Shittenou into the ruby to save him from being found by the Wiseman, to save him from being killed by the Wiseman, for he had only done what Rubeus himself was attempting to do, protect his prince. The Wiseman would have killed him slowly, sadistically, and Rubeus' honor had screamed out against letting the fighter with whom he so empathized be killed.

But as Rubeus pressed his fingers to the man's throat now, nearly a minute passed before a pulse surfaced to press so lightly against his fingers before sinking again.

The Shittenou wasn't dead, but he was dying. And if he died, Rubeus and his sisters would die with him, because if Rubeus could not obtain the princess before Emerald unseated him, he would be executed. And there would be no one to protect his sisters or his prince from the Wiseman's psychotic ambition.

Rubeus's fingernails dug into his palms. His eyes, clenched inside tight fists of tense skin, darted across the Shittenou's body where it lay sprawled across one of Bertie's dissection tables, restrained at each wrist and ankle to the tabletop. Darted across the wound that gashed the Shittenou's back from his scapula to his pelvis – Avery's hit, if Rubeus wasn't mistaken – and the gouts of gore caked in the chinks of his armor and clumped beneath his broken, purpled nose.

Darted back to his purpling fingers – and spotted something that he had not seen before. Half-hidden beneath the Shittenou's torn sleeve, as though it had slipped from his fingers, a pale green stone.

Rubeus picked it up, trying to ignore the cold rigidity, like a rock, of the Shittenou's arm. An unpleasant shock sizzled up the nerves of his fingers as they touched the stone; he tried to hold onto it, but it was like holding a piece of flaming coal; his fleshy palm began to sizzle and smoke.

He shoved the rock back into the Shittenou's curled hand.

A twitch of one of the fingers was Rubeus' only warning. He flinched backward –

Then vomit gushed from the Shittenou's mouth.

His body jerked limply on the table, like a hose rearing from water surging out of it. But his head did not rise from the tabletop. As the flood of vomit dwindled to a small stream over the edge of the bier, Rubeus heard the wet sound of the Shittenou's ragged breathing as he spluttered and choked on his own stomach's contents.

Rubeus stepped toward him, disregarding the chunky liquid that squelched beneath his boots. "Shittenou."

"Go to hell." The Shittenou's voice was a rasp. His bruised eyes, though Rubeus stood before him, did not move from their sightless frontward stare. A firework of blood radiated from the corner of one of them, nearly swallowing the blue iris.

But he was scowling defiantly, venomously, and Rubeus felt a tremendous respect and regret fill him as a gag twisted the Terran's face from his scowl and a fresh stream of yellowish-white liquid chased red blood from his lips and pooled around his face.

He forced himself not to look away.

When the Shittenou's gagging had stopped, he said quickly, "Itto, I need you to listen to me. I don't want to fight you."

"No shit?" rasped the blond Shittenou. Rubeus had to lean close to hear him: his breath was as sour with vomit as his nearly inaudible voice was with sarcasm.

The Terran laughed suddenly, a horrible wet spluttering sound that sent drops of blood and more sour air across Rubeus' face. "No, lots of shit. All over me."

He seemed to find this hilarious, laughing with his blank eyes, but the spasms of laughter died as quickly as they had begun. As his body curled in on itself, like milk curdling, his laughs became panting moans to his knees.

"Please," said Rubeus, aware of his pleading tone and too desperate even to resent it. "Look. My intentions are peaceful." To prove it, he undid the restraints strapping the Terran to the table.

Suddenly Rubeus' face was smashed against the table. He squeezed his eyes shut against the thin layer of vomit and tried to catch his breath around the pain that spiraled from his forehead and from the sharp crystal digging under his Adam's apple.

"Fucking bastard," whispered the Shittenou. His voice shook with weakness, but his hold on the crystal at Rubeus' throat was steady.

The crystal sank into Rubeus' flesh –

"Stop!" Rubeus shouted, seizing it.

It was not difficult to wrestle the crystal from the Terran's grasp. He straightened, taking a step back, swiping the side of his face with his arm.

Then he reached out carefully to place the long shard of crystal next to the Shittenou, who lay still but for his chest, heaving. Bright red was beginning to stream slowly from his nose again.

"See?" said Rubeus. "I could have killed you. I didn't. I haven't. I saved you from the Wiseman, Itto! Your princess – "

"I won't…tell you…" The man was beginning to struggle to breathe now, he tilted his head back as though to gulp at the air. Rubeus saw the green stone in his hand flickering bright, then dark, like a guttering candle. "…anything."

Rubeus saw the crystal shuddering up into the air. He watched, as though from within a ruby prison, the shard shoot sharp-end first for the Shittenou's exposed throat.

L

_"Rini."_

_"..ini…"_

_" Rini!"_

_Rini gasped and woke up. There was a hot hand on her back._

_"Rini," said the voice again, and this time it was Asanuma's. Tense with relief and weariness. "It's okay, Rini-bear. You're home. You're safe." His hot, dry hand smoothed back her bangs as her wide, shocked eyes flicked up to his. "Were you having a nightmare?"_

_Her pillow was almost as hot against her cheek as Asanuma's hand. She felt his fingers stiffen on her shoulder blades as she lifted her hand in front of her face._

_It was small and pale and had five fingers. No leaves. No bark._

_She realized, though, that the room was dark, the numbers on her clock glowing 3:30 A.M., but she could see the lines of her palm as clearly as if it was daylight. _

_She rolled over and sat up, and just glimpsed a soft white glow reflected in Asanuma's eyes before he turned on her bedside lamp. The reflection of the lamp's yellow light jumped up to fill his eyes. One of them was purple and shiny, freshly bruised and slowly healing. She could smell the scent of fire mixed with his chalky exhaustion and, ever so slightly, traces of the acrid aura that belonged to the Black Moon. He had been fighting._

_"Rini," he said again. "Talk to me, kiddo."_

_Rini mustered a glare. "Don't call me kiddo."_

_A corner of his mouth kicked up a little. "I'll call you whatever I want, Little Miss Marshmallow." But his lips fell back into a tired line. "What were you dreaming, Rini?"_

_She looked at her hands again. Already the memories of the dream were sliding away, like pebbles crumbling from the edge of a cliff when she tried to stand on it. She could still feel, though, the too-tight hands biting into her shoulders like leathery jaws. Sturdier, more calloused than Asanuma's…_

_"It was the one who taught me how to transform," she said slowly, shrugging against the phantom sensation._

_Asanuma's face relaxed a little. The bruise around his eye was beginning to lighten slowly to a poisonous green. "Is he going to teach you how to do animal transformations now?"_

_"I…don't think so…" Rini's voice was uncertain. She couldn't remember if he'd said more, that shadowy figure who sometimes visited her dreams. She felt like there was more, more that she'd forgotten, a warm pressure on her forehead. But all she could remember, ground into her like the two vice-tight hands – _

_"He said I needed to tell you that it's got her." Rini dug her fingernails into her shoulders and looked up at Asanuma. "And he's coming to get what he's left."_

_Asanuma stared at her. His eyes were intense as a burn, searing across her face as he searched it. His face was very white._

_"Well," he said after a long moment. "That teaches us not to eat pineapple crumble with tomato juice, doesn't it? Go to sleep and try to have less weird dreams, Rini-bear."_

_He turned off the lights, quickly, but still too late, because she had already seen the stricken look in his eyes. She let him grab her blankets and tuck them around her too tightly, and she did not say anything, did not ask anything, because suddenly all she wanted was to hide under her covers and pretend that she had only dreamed that there was something that could make Asanuma look so broken._

_But the words stalked through the darkness like a hungry thing waiting to spring, chasing her from sleep._

'It's got her. And he's coming back to get what he left.'

L

A/N: Please please _please_tell me how you feel about the characters (Rini, Numa, Rei, especially) and the events taking place. Do they make sense? Do you feel let down? Satisfied? Excited? Some Sere/Dare next chapter, I promise.


	26. Chapter 26

A/N: Thank you, everyone, for waiting so long again! Sorry! Thank you for all your theories and constructive criticism in the reviews! I really appreciate it and have tried to take it into account, although there's a lot of angst this chapter. Again, sorry!

I have included an update for the STC timeline. Both it and this chapter explain who the Shittenou with Rubeus is, but I would suggest skimming Chapter 25 again and looking at what name Rubeus calls him. We know our three Shittenous' last names, right? Chapter 25 also has a lot of foreshadowing that I think you might enjoy seeing realized here.

Several culture/translation notes: An **Eskimo kiss**, for anyone who doesn't know, is basically just two people rubbing noses. **Mochi** is basically a sticky rice cake often eaten at New Year's (incidentally, odango are also made from it). In Japanese folklore, a rabbit pounds mochi on the moon, and Serena's Japanese name, Usagi Tsukino, means, of course, rabbit of the moon.

Again, GORE and LANGUAGE warning.

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon or any other proper nouns.

**- Timeline -**

For the first part of the timeline, please go to Chapter 21. This is a continuation including events from **STC Season 2, Chapters 21-25**:

75. A flashback to three years in the past showed how Darien met Mikai again for the first time since they were in the orphanage together. Mikai worked at the garage where Darien took his car to be repaired after it was mangled in a youma attack.

76. Back in the present, Mikai woke up on the floor to the sound of the news talking about small earthquakes affecting Tokyo.

77. Rei woke up to find herself in Sailor Mercury's care. Rei realized from the Senshi's unmuddled aura that she wasn't Ami. Sailor Mercury said that she was barely able to stop Ami from mentally dissociating and that she, Mercury, surfaced to stop Ami from breaking down entirely. Mercury told Rei that she came to make sure that the same thing does not happen to Rei. Meanwhile, Haruka and Michiru realized that Rei has been taken out of their custody.

78. Lita interrogated Serena about her date with Haruka, and Serena tried to act normally with Darien while they ate lunch together. Coach Etoukou ambushed them with the news that they have to participate on the track team because of the contrast Serena unwittingly signed last school year.

79. The gang went to pick up Rini, and Darien seemed unfazed when Lita began to talk about Serena's date with Haruka. Asanuma yelled at Darien for not acting, but Darien was determined to do the right thing and let Serena go.

80. Rini was moved up the Buji's second grade class. While they were at the park, she told Serena that she doesn't know any Senshi in the future except Mars, whom she has met a few times. A youma attacked, and Rini transformed into a flower so Serena could put her in her Subspace pocket.

81. Unconscious, energy-drained civilians were suffocating in the pool of water that the youma had created, but a sudden violent wind that Moon initially thought came from Darien blows the water away. As Moon tried to discern the wind's source, Bertie's youma attacked her while Bertie watched. Buji and Mayuko woke from their energy-drained stupor while Moon was fighting, but she managed to dust the youma before it could hurt them anymore. Bertie left, and Moon apologized to Mayuko for not having saved her husband, Buji's father. Mayuko forgave her.

82. Bertie revealed to her sisters that she recorded Moon's fight with her youma onto two recording crystals. She gave one to Rubeus and kept the other to study so that she can plot a trap for Moon.

83. Mercury began to train Rei with Rei making satisfying progress. Meanwhile, Mercury had also been keeping tabs on Mikai, and she leads a youma to the garage where he works, intending for his Shittenou powers to surface to "save" her from the youma. Instead, Mikai used a blowtorch to get rid of it.

84. Mikai recognized Sailor Mercury as Ami Mizuno, the girl from Darien's school who disappeared several months ago. Rereading the newspaper articles concerning her disappearance and the youma attack at Darien's prom, a suspicion blossomed in his mind: were Darien and his friends the superheroes that protected Tokyo? The surveillance program that Mercury was using to monitor Mikai alerted her to his suspicion.

85. Michiru reminded Haruka not to get too attached to Serena, but she was disheartened by Haruka's fervent reply that the princess is her only concern.

86. When Haruka arrived to pick up Serena from school, Asanuma recognized him as the man who asked him about Rei Hino at a diplomatic gala months ago. Everyone, including Darien, prevented Asanuma from beating up or at least interrogating Haruka. Feeling betrayed and furious, Asanuma went to get Rini, who told him that people never take him seriously when it comes to Rei because he always goes berserk when he hears any news of her.

87. Mikai visited Darien at Darien's apartment with the intent of sneakily finding out if his friend really was Tuxedo Mask. Darien revealed nothing until Mikai mentioned physical interest in Serena, at which point he was unable to prevent Endymion from beginning to surface, gradually transforming him into a wolf. Mikai's voice pushed Endymion back down, however, and Darien was able to push the transformation back. Mikai pretended not to have seen Darien transforming, and Darien believed him. But he decided to distance himself from Mikai lest the same thing happen to him as happened to Asanuma and Motoki: becoming a Shittenou.

88. Rubeus took Bertie's recording crystal to Prince Diamond, while Bertie complained that the Wiseman has adversely affected their prince.

89. When Mikai returned to his apartment, Sailor Mercury was waiting for him. She told him that he was no longer technically human and offered to train him in exchange for him not telling anyone about her. Mikai agreed but wanted to know what happened to Ami.

90. Miss Haruna announced that the school's annual Christmas festival for the Juuban Elementary kids would be held at the skating rink. Serena tried to make Darien jealous by inviting Lita and Motoki on a double-date to the rink with her and Haruka. When he barely reacted, she left the lunchroom, devastated by her own petty actions and feelings. When Lita followed her out and told her that she did the right thing, both of their flash-forms asserted dominance for a brief second before Michiru quickly approached them.

91. Darien and Serena went to the track team meeting, where Darien pretended that nothing was wrong. Serena was incredibly grateful, and the rift between them was briefly mended.

92. While Serena walked Buji and Rini home that day, they saw a newspaper announcing that Senator Hino's lost daughter had returned home.

93. Asanuma insisted that the girl in the newspaper wasn't Rei. The group agreed not to tear off to Tokyo in search of her. Meanwhile, Motoki patrolled the streets for youma. With Asanuma's help, he stopped a man's attack on a young woman.

94. Pluto castigated Michiru and Haruka for not having found Saturn yet and for not adequately distancing Serena and Darien. She showed them the frozen image of the two embracing reincarnations from Chapter 18 (when Serenity and Endymion's flash-forms took over and required Mercury and Rei's intervention to be separated from each other). Haruka and Michiru were not aware that these were the flash-forms; they thought that it was only Serena and Darien. Haruka proposed killing Sailor Moon in order to solve the problem of the prince's loyalty to the princess. Pluto warned her that if Haruka killed Sailor Moon, Pluto would free Uranus' flash-form.

95. Pluto also revealed that the High Senshi and Chaos are approaching the system and that Saturn must be found because without the Senshi of Death's interference, the princess's soul will go to hell when she dies. From hell there is no reincarnation, and the princess would die in the fight against Chaos without hope of being reincarnated.

96. Aware in the back of her mind of the need to prevent Endymion's flash-form from surfacing lest it awaken Serenity's, Mercury told Pluto that she neglected to tell Haruka and Michiru that awakening Saturn will destroy the planet. She also told Pluto that she cannot understand how the Black Moon traveled back to the past without Pluto's help unless the princess helped them. Pluto gave Mercury news that Mercury, secretly, already knew: in the future, Endymion will most likely be under Chaos's influence, and he could have helped the Black Moon back in time. Mercury argued that the High Senshi, who have a Time Key, may have been the ones to help the Black Moon. Pluto ordered Mercury to figure out how Endymion was able to enter and exit the Time Plane at will, an order which forced Mercury to pay less attention to the question of who helped the Black Moon travel back in time.

97. Darien and Serena were chosen to be the Clauses for the Christmas festival. Darien increasingly worried about Endymion's growing power inside him. Asanuma and Rini began to gradually grow closer.

98. Mikai trained by sparring with Rei.

99. Buji helped Darien pick a locket for Serena's Christmas present. Darien asked Motoki if he should make Rini live with him and discovered that Motoki's father had brain cancer. Furuhata-san was only given about six months to live, but Dr. Tomoe's treatment has helped him intensely.

100. When Darien told Serena about Motoki's father and the Golden Crystal's inability to heal him, Endymion's flash-form surfaced. It drew out Serenity's, and Mercury went with Rei to separate the two lovers. She forbade Rei to look into their eyes lest Rei's flash-form also surface.

101. After Claus rehearsal the next day, Darien's burning need to _see_ Serena's face began to dredge Endymion back to the surface. Serenity had also just began to surface in Serena when Haruka showed up. Darien disappeared to Elysion while Haruka, upon meeting Serena's eyes, began to yield to Uranus's flash-form until Miss Kaioh showed up. Serena, seeing the way Haruka watched Michiru, realized that she had had no success in burying her love for Darien and that she could no longer selfishly use Haruka. She broke up with him.

102. Mercury, watching the record of the battle with Metallia that Pluto had given her, realized that the Golden Crystal was sentient: it had acted to prevent the light from the Silver Crystal from touching Darien's eyes. By preventing this energy from touching his eyes, it had prevented Endymion's flash-form from being awakened during the battle; it had kept Darien in control. Mercury tried to figure out why the Golden Crystal would prefer Darien to the more powerful Endymion but found no answer. With Ami's prompting, she realized, however, that because flash-forms surface in times of intense stress, by reversing Darien's blindness, she could prevent Endymion's flash-form from surfacing so easily.

103. Serena and Darien – mostly Serena – were a hit as the Clauses. When Rini saw them laughing with Buji, she felt jealous. She realized that if Serena had been her mother, Darien would have loved her, and she was about to make her wish to Santa when the Black Moon attacked.

104. Serena struggled to find a place to hide and put Rini into her subspace pocket while Darien transformed and fought, realizing that some of the youma were humans transformed to look like youma. Buji helped Serena and Rini hide.

105. Prisma's spider youma, which Serena originally fought in the arcade, caught her energy and undid her transformation. Bertie and the youma mistook Serena for Rini because of the color of her energy. Asanuma attacked Bertie, giving Serena the chance to retransform. Bertie recognized him from the future and trapped him in ice. She had also frozen Lita and Motoki.

106. Bertie explained to Moon that the Black Moon needed to get Rini because Chaos wants to have Rini, the most powerful being that has ever been born, to shape into whatever it wants. She severely beat Moon in their battle. Darien, sensing Serena's pain, began to yield to Endymion. Only Mikai's cooling presence arriving jars him briefly back to himself.

107. Alerted of the youma attack by Buji, to whom he had given his cell number, Mikai broke into the battle between Moon and Bertie. When Bertie attempted to freeze Moon in ice, Mikai, clad in Shittenou armor, mixed gardening soil into the water, preventing the water from freezing. He threatened to trap Bertie underground. Bertie fled, but she sent the ice shards on the floor shooting at him first.

108. From her hidden position, Mercury reversed the ice shards' trajectory to direct them at Mask. They tore into him, shredding his face and eyes.

109. The Golden Crystal healed Darien's eyes, returning his sight. Able to see Serena, he sees her hair and remembers the last time that he saw them, in Elysion – when, thinking that he couldn't hear her, she told him that she loved him. Aware that he could not tell her that he loved her in return until the princess arrives and he can reject her, Darien settled for holding her close.

110. After freeing Lita, Asanuma, and Motoki, the gang prepared to head home. Buji gave Rini a present, a bracelet with her name spelled out in beads. Mikai returned home to find Mercury there. He gave her a chess set for Ami, and Ami's eyes surfaced from Mercury's for a brief moment. Mikai threatened to free Ami from Mercury the same way that Mercury freed Darien from Endymion, but Mercury told him that Ami could not be _let_ out.

111. Darien gave Serena the locket, which he had alchemized into a gold to match her hair. He spent Christmas Eve night and Christmas Day at her house.

112. Lita stayed with the Furuhatas for Christmas, where she discovered Furuhata-san's cancerous condition. She wanted Motoki and his family to distance themselves from Furuhata-san so that they would not suffer as much when he dies, but Motoki tried to break up with her to save her from the same suffering. She realized that their situation was the same as Serena and Darien's and that she should no longer attempt to keep them apart.

113. Rini felt very guilty the day after Christmas because she knew that the Tsukinos, who had done so much for her and Darien, would lose their daughter because of her and Darien. The knowledge that Serena would die proved too much for Rini's willpower; she burrowed into Serena's lap like a scared child.

114. Dr. Tomoe had heard that Darien's sight returned, and that morning he called Darien to his office, where he took a blood sample. Darien returned to his apartment to find Serena waiting there with his wallet (which he forgot at the Tsukinos') and Christmas left-overs.

115. Darien apologized again to Serena for forcing her to deal with Rini, and Serena struggled to convey to him that she really didn't mind without revealing that she had begun to love Rini as much as if she were her own child.

116. Upon visiting Mikai to interrogate him, Darien and Asanuma discovered that Mikai has been in contact with Sailor Mercury. Knowing that this would probably reveal her on-the-side activities to Pluto, Mercury was very upset with Mikai for his carelessness, but she was even more upset with herself: Mikai had been told more about flash-forms and Saturn than she intended him to know. Mercury insinuated that this was because of Ami's influence.

117. Forced into action by Mikai's loose tongue, Mercury sent Rei away to get Saturn's reincarnation before someone else could get to her. Mercury warned Rei that she must not return to the group, even to Asanuma, because of all the people that will be trying to get their hands on Saturn. Rei's exile with Saturn's reincarnation may be permanent, and at the very least, it will be long-term.

118. Because of Bertie's failure at the Christmas festival and the sisters' previous failures to get energy and Rini, Rubeus was threatened with being removed from his post, a removal which means execution. He began plotting his last attempt to get Rini.

119. When the group convened to interrogate/welcome Mikai, Mikai explained how he first met Mercury and formed his suspicion that Darien was Tuxedo Mask and Serena, Ami Mizuno, and Rei Hino were Senshi. He explained that all of the Senshi and Darien's souls had a **flash-form**, which was a preserved copy of their incarnations from the Silver Millennium and took over their bodies under times of extreme danger or instability, such as had briefly occurred to Lita and briefly but frequently occurred to Darien. Ami's body, he explained, had been completely taken over by the Sailor Mercury's flash-form.

120. Mayuko, with yet another doctor's appointment, dropped Buji off at the Tsukinos' house, where Rini gave him a name bracelet in return for the one he had given her as a Christmas present.

121. Darien and Mikai realized that with their powers over the earth's elements, they could create weapons out of a substance harder than diamond.

122. Darien, remembering how he had sensed Asanuma's first realization that he could have died fighting at the skating rink, set himself and Mikai to work producing weapons for the Shittenou to use.

123. Serena, as usual, felt guilty when she felt the bumps on Buji's head from his injuries at the skating rink. Asanuma and Rini went to the grocery store and exchanged presents: for her, a snow globe with that year's Christmas date on it, and for him, an Asanuma-in-Shittenou-ensemble ornament. Asanuma, though enjoying being able to make Rini have so much fun, worried about why he, and not one of the others, had been left behind in the future to take care of Rini. Had the others died?

124. When Darien, before the Christmas festival (see #101), had almost kissed Serena behind the bushes in the school courtyard, both of their flash-forms had been very close to the surface. When Haruka approached to separate them, the proximity to Serenity's flash-form pulled Sailor Uranus's very close to the surface. Michiru was able to snap her out of it, but after Christmas, she called on Pluto to tell the Time Senshi what had happened.

125. Pluto called on Mercury, who appeared tense to Michiru. Pluto, who had not seen Haruka's near-lapse in her time mirrors, accused Mercury of having stolen time mirrors from her. However, Mercury revealed that Pluto has been breaking Chronos' Laws by travelling outside of the time plane. Pluto confessed that she knew that Mercury had been acting against her but that she had turned a blind eye to her actions because she thought that they were intended to help the princess. Before Mercury could blame her for any more in front of Michiru and Haruka, Pluto began to summon Ami back to the surface. Mercury escaped before she could finish.

126. Haruka rose to confront Pluto, but Pluto summoned Sailor Uranus to the surface before she could do anything. Uranus, in control of Haruka's body, vanished to find Rei. Pluto warned Michiru that if she followed Mercury's example, both her and Haruka would be permanently submerged and their flash-forms given control of their bodies for good.

127. Rei went to her father's mansion, where Hotaru Tomoe, the girl whom Mercury had told her was Saturn's reincarnation, currently resided. Distracted by memories of her father and by thoughts of what she might do if she saw him, Rei forgot to shield her aura using the technique that Mercury had taught her. She found the girl, who begged her not to kill an unidentified "him" because he was just trying to bring her mother back. Before she could leave with the girl, however, Sailor Uranus attacked, setting the girl's bedroom on fire.

128. The presence of the flash-form, and not Haruka, momentarily paralyzed Rei with terror. Uranus attempted to draw Mars' flash-form out, to take control of Rei's body, forcing Rei to detransform before the Senshi flash-form inside her could claw free. Rei's father appeared, then, approaching through the fire-filled bedroom. Rei shot Uranus in the legs before the Senshi could summon a wind that would consume her father in flame. The Senshi fell off the balcony and vanished.

129. Rei then knocked her father out, dumped him in bushes away from the house, and fled with Saturn's reincarnation.

130. Long ago, Rubeus was imprisoned for centuries in a phoenix-blood ruby by a Senshi before Prince Diamond freed him. Rubeus had sworn never to let the ruby imprison anyone again. But in order to save Asanuma Itto, the Shittenou who had guarded Rini in the future, from being found and tortured by the Wiseman, he trapped the Shittenou in the ruby, which he took with him to the past. The Asanuma from the future, mortally wounded from fighting with the Four Sisters so that Rini could escape to the past, was unable to regain consciousness until Rubeus found his Shittenou stone and placed it in his hand. Barely conscious, Future Asanuma attempted to kill Rubeus before Rubeus could interrogate him, but he was too weak. He tried to kill himself with a crystal shard instead to prevent himself from being forced to tell anything.

131. In the future, Rini has a dream. The shadowy man whose voice who had taught her how to use her powers to transform into plants tells her to warn Asanuma that, "It's got her. And he's coming to get what he left." When she tells Asanuma, he pretends that everything is okay, but he cannot hide the stricken look in his eyes.

**- End of Timeline -**

-

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Reason for the Laws

-

_"I'm awake."_

_She heard the footsteps halt. Then they resumed, no longer carefully measured and muffled, but Asanuma's normal, unhurried tread._

_"You are, huh?" he said, leaning over her bed and blocking the faint light that crept into her dark room from the hallway. "Then you'll get the full wrath of my garlic breath when I give you a goodnight kiss!"_

_Rini gave a squeal and bolted under the covers as Asanuma grabbed for her. He scooped her up, covers and all, and peeled her out of her sheets and blanket._

_"Aha!" he said when he had uncovered her and planted a wet, sloppy kiss on her forehead._

_Despite what he'd said, and even though they'd eaten spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner that night, like they always did on Wednesday nights, Rini didn't smell any garlic as he held her close. She smelled instead the sharp tang of ozone, so strong in her nose that it overwhelmed even the usual dusty smell of canvas and charcoals that usually clung to his clothes._

_She would rather have smelled the garlic._

_Asanuma untangled her covers one-handed, still trapping her in his lap with the other. "Give the Sandman a break already!" he told her, letting her scramble out of his lap and tucking her in again. "You were supposed to be asleep hours ago!"_

_He was acting like nothing was wrong, like there wasn't anything at all that could possibly be keeping her from falling asleep. She didn't want to bring up the dream she'd had a week ago, the one that she had told him about, but it wouldn't leave her thoughts alone. She kept thinking about it; it kept making her think that she was seeing things in the corner of her eyes, things following her. She wanted to tell him so that he could comfort her and tell her that she was just imagining it, there couldn't possibly be anyone who had tracked her down, but she knew that she was old enough now that she should do that for herself, tell _herself_ when she was being stupid and imagining things. Asanuma had enough to worry about, without comforting her ridiculous fears._

_Part of her mind knew too, now, that there were some things that Asanuma couldn't fix. If he told her that of course nothing was following her, he might be lying. She understood, now, the painful expression that sometimes pulled at the edges of his mouth and eyes. She didn't want to see it. She didn't want to hear him tell her that she was safe and know that he felt bad for lying to her._

_So instead of saying why she couldn't sleep, she said instead, "We have to dye my hair again tomorrow."_

_Asanuma's hand found her bangs and smoothed them down. He didn't say anything for a moment, and she could smell, as her nose was sometimes able to do, Asanuma's sour fear, sharpened by wary alarm. He had dyed her hair pink to match the other children's rainbow-colored hair again only a week ago, just before she had the dream, and now the roots were already beginning to grow back brown. How soon before the roots began to grow back in again so quickly that it would grow back brown faster than they could dye it pink? How long before she was discovered?_

_When Asanuma spoke, fluffing up her bangs as though she was a doll, he said, "See, that's what I get for switching to the cheap brand of dye. You get what you pay for, eh, Rini-bear?"_

_He stood up, and her mattress sighed as it rose back to its normal level without his weight pressing it down. "We'll go it tomorrow when you get home from school."_

_Rini didn't know if waiting that long was a good idea, but Asanuma reeked of weariness. She wondered if he, like her, was keeping a few things secret. She knew that he had been fighting the Black Moon youma when he disappeared after dinner, but only now, as she looked at the slumped curve of his shoulder, did she realize that one day, Asanuma could _lose_ to them._

_And if he lost…_

_He was at the door when the words shot from her mouth. _

_"Won't they come?"_

_A shadow framed in the light from the hallway, he went still. Rini pushed her forehead into her pillow and waited almost hopefully for him to walk away without answering. She found herself hoping that he hadn't even heard her. If he hadn't heard her, then that would be a sign, it would mean that she didn't want to know the answer. And she would never ask it, never again._

_But Asanuma turned. He came back to her bed, and he sat down next to where she lay, and he put his back against the headboard and said, "Come here" and pulled her into his lap._

_He didn't speak for a long time after that. He just kept stroking her hair. As the minutes stretched longer, and the rhythmic strokes of his fingers began to comb drowsiness through her thoughts, Rini knew that he was hoping for her to fall asleep so that he would not have to answer. _

_She pulled her head away. She made herself ask. "Asanuma. Will they?"_

_His eyes seemed to glow down at her in the darkness. "Have I ever told you how much you're like your dad?"_

_Rini pulled back. She wanted to put distance between herself and what he had just said. Distance between herself and the thought of her father, the man who hadn't raised her. Distance, as if the mere mention of that man, if allowed to hang in the air, could dissolve the claim that Asanuma had on her, the claim that belonged to him, because he'd raised her, taught her to ride a bike, to tie her shoes, to find the remainder in long division._

_She realized that she was shaking her head when Asanuma said, "Well, you are. A freaking lot like him. And you know something else?"_

_Rini stared into his shadowed eyes, not sure she wanted to know. "No."_

_He put his arms around her. "I love you." His arms were very tight. "More than anything else in the world."_

_Rini went very still. His forehead was very hard against the top of her head. "Don't be stupid," she said quietly into his collar. "Not more than Rei."_

_"Even more than Rei." Asanuma's voice was a whisper, and Rini wondered whether, if she looked up, that pained lying expression would be on his face._

_But before she could muster up the courage to look, Asanuma went stiff. "Hang on! How'd you know her name?"_

_Rini had forgotten that she wasn't supposed to know the name of the Senshi who had come a few times to see her and Asanuma. "Don't keep your old journal in such an obvious place," she said lightly, in stark contrast to the heavy pounding of her pulse. "Really, Asanuma, the toilet paper drawer?"_

_"Well, YOU never replace the toilet paper," retorted Asanuma. "What do you do, take a glance at the empty roll and say to yourself, 'Hmm, should I get a new roll of toilet paper out? Nah, Asanuma'll do it, that's what he's here for – '"_

_"I do too replace it, and you know it," said Rini indignantly. "You're just trying to change the subject." She felt a little desperate now. "Can't we call them?"_

_His grip on her tightened. "No."_

_Rini told herself that she understood. Her parents were fighting for their lives and everyone else's. Even just the few months that her mother had spent away from the battlefronts for Rini to be born had allowed Chaos to make such large advances that even now, six years later, more than half of the planets that Chaos had taken in that short period were still under its control. If they were both, Earth Prince and Moon Princess, to leave the battlefront again, the consequences would be disastrous. Far more disastrous, certainly, than the death of a daughter who couldn't do much more than turn herself into pretty flowers and the Shittenou who had been left to protect her. The tactics of the situation were as obvious as the brown streaks in Rini's hair._

_And yet –_

_"I don't want to die," she whispered._

_"We'll be fine." Asanuma hadn't heard her. He was using his 'Everything's alright; I don't know why you're so worried' voice again. "We don't need to call them."_

_Rini smelled the almost sulfurous ozone radiating from his pores, the sour weariness wafting from his aura, like the yellow gastric juice that one vomits up when there is nothing left in the stomach to be thrown up._

_"Stop _lying!_" she shrieked. She pounded a fist against his chest. "You're been using your _life-force_, Asanuma, did you think I wouldn't notice that? If they keep coming and you have to fight them, you're going to die!"_

_His arms around her did not slacken. "Rini."_

_"_Call them!_"_

_"No."_

_"But for you!" When had she started crying? Her nose was running, her voice was shaking and cracking in globs of tears. "I know they won't come for me, but you were their best friend! They can't just leave you to die!"_

_Inside her, the question screamed. _Why won't they come for me? Why won't you call them for me?

_Asanuma's arms tightened around her. But he wouldn't look at her. "We can't call them."_

_Resentment burst and spiraled through her like a firework. He was just like them. He, like them, had chosen the universe over her. _

_"You lied!" She clawed at his arms, trying to get out. "You don't love me at all!"He had only taken care of her because it was his duty, because he was her father's Shittenou, not because he loved her, and she wanted to hurt him, to call him the cruelest names she could. She wished that he would disappear, just leave and go off to where his wonderful Rei was, where her parents were, and fight with them, and he could ignore her like everyone else instead of pushing his pity and charity onto her – she didn't need him – she didn't need anyone –_

_She clawed out of his lap, eyes hot and blurry. He seized her. She screeched and fought like a wildcat until her eyes seemed almost to burn, and she twisted to scream at him, "LET GO!"_

_His hands dropped from her like hot coals. He looked shocked; she could see his slack face quite clearly, the yellow light from the hallway reflecting in his eyes like embers. "Rini – "_

_"No!" she screamed, covering her ears and glaring hard, hard, at him. "Don't talk to me! Go _away!_"_

_Stiffly, he got up. His lips were as tightly pressed together as though they had been sewn, his eyes still glowing yellow embers._

_He left the room, and Rini slammed the door shut and huddled at its base to cry bitterly into the carpet._

-

The Shittenou's crystal shard made a sound like as a slurp as it embedded itself in unprotected flesh. Rubeus bit down hard on his tongue, his jaw nearly splintering as he struggled to keep from crying out at the pain.

The Shittenou's eyes slid slowly back open. His clouded pupils struggled downward to see his throat, to see the crystal that should be protruding from it.

Rubeus could hold back no longer. An agonized hiss escaped from behind his clenched teeth. The Shittenou's eyes slid toward him, to the shard that had impaled Rubeus' palm when he had shoved it in front of the Terran's neck.

The Shittenou's eyelids fell shut again. A noise as pain-filled as Rubeus' wisped from his lips, a defeated sound.

"Listen to me." Rubeus' hand trembled, too heavy with the weight of the crystal in his flesh and the adrenaline coursing through his veins. Was he really about to be so stupid? "There's not a lot of time. You're in the past, Itto. Your princess fled here through time to the year 2006, and we followed her here. I trapped you in a phoenix-blood ruby and brought you along. You know how phoenix-blood rubies work?"

The Shittenou made a sound that could be merely roan of pain or a reply in the negative. "Time is frozen inside them," said Rubeus swiftly. "So you're not dead yet. But you probably have only about an hour left at most. If you ask me, I will put you back into it to keep you alive, but then you will be trapped there and the Wiseman will have your princess."

The Shittenou was trying to say something. It was unintelligible, but Rubeus had a good idea of what he was asking. He leaned closer to speak to the blond man. "I am about be stripped of my post. I will be executed, and the Wiseman will find an excuse to kill my sisters as well. And my prince will be left to the Wiseman's whims.

"I need to kill the Wiseman." He gripped the Shittenou's unnaturally dry hand, pressing his palm against it. "You have the power to know that I am not lying."

The Shittenou's limp hand barely twitched in his. All his strength seemed to go into forcing out several words. "What need…from me?"

"The only being in this time with the power to kill Wiseman is your prince." Rubeus kept his hand against the Shittenou's so that the Terran would know that all he spoke was the truth. "To kill him we need him to come. We must lure them both here. They will both come if they think that I have captured the princess here." He paused. "The princess will come here to be captured if she sense you."

The skin around the Shittenou's ruined eyes hardened. His eyelids slid shut. Rubeus could sense him gathering his energy to refuse.

Rubeus took his hand from the Shittenou's. Hastily, he wrenched the crystal shard from where it was lodged through his other hand. Pain rippled through him, but he pushed it back, holding his palm over one of the torn wounds on the Shittenou's abdomen. Rubeus' dark blood fell in drops to the wound.

"We shall trade a blood oath," he said. "I swear that if you uncloak your aura so that the princess will sense it and fight with me against the Wiseman, I will protect your princess and fight with you and your prince against the Wiseman."

The Shittenou's eyes, which had slid open again, wincing, when Rubeus' salty blood fell to the wound, screwed shut. Now he opened them again. "I…swear," he whispered. "Now stop…bleeding…on me."

Relief shot through Rubeus like lightning. He pressed his gored palm against his pant leg and placed the other against the Shittenou's forehead.

"I'll put you back into the ruby now," he told him quickly. "To keep you alive until we have a chance to lure your princess. When I bring you out, you must uncloak your aura immediately and stretch it out so that she can sense it. Use as much energy as you need, for when your prince comes, he will heal you so that you can help to protect him."

The ruby pulsed once as he touched it to the Shittenou; then the Shittenou's body was gone, a dark shape inside the gem. Rubeus tucked it inside his vest and went to begin the arduous task of summoning youma to send out when he captured the princess in order to keep the Wiseman from being suspicious.

They would both protect their princes, he and this Shittenou.

-

A sense of déjà vu slid into Serena's dream gently, like a plastic cake server cutting slowly through a cake. Something very light and warm that was outside her and yet also inside her had just stroked the skin behind her ear.

Her eyelashes scraped against her pillow as she drowsily opened her eyes. She turned her head to look sleepily out her uncurtained window. Nestled in the dark shape of her tree were two faint glimmers of golden light, like floating stars.

She dragged the blanket from her bed and wrapped it around her like a cape, leaning over the side of her bed to check that Rini was still sleeping, her tiny fist curled a her cheek. Then she slid off her bed and crossed to the window.

It opened almost silently, making her wonder if she was still dreaming. Certainly it would explain why when she glanced down at her hands they seemed almost to be glowing in the full moonlight and why she felt so airy and detached and silken…

A breath of air touched her cheek. "Can I come in?"

She looked up and found Darien looking at her, slipping off his domino mask. His eyes were so very gold. Of course she must be dreaming. He wouldn't look at her like that if it wasn't a dream. But she knew it was too dangerous to let herself begin to believe things even in dreams, to indulge in those sorts of desires, so she began to say "No – "

"Fine, you come out here." Before she could utter another word, Darien hauled her up and swung her into the same perch in the tree where they had waited for Christmas morning to arrive. He wrapped his arms around her, as though she was a teddy bear. She forced her dream self to begin to protest.

Again he interrupted her before more than a word had left her mouth. "I'm cold, Odango. Be the generous soul I know you are and share the warmth."

Her lips twitched despite herself, and then she twitched as his cold chin tucked itself against the bare skin above her pajama collar. Her resolve melted. It was only a dream. She probably wouldn't even remember it. It was okay to turn her head so that her forehead was against his cold cheek and let him hold her.

Surreptitiously, she snuggled further into her blanket, trying to keep the cold air from touching her bare toes.

Then she flailed as suddenly she was pulled backward.

"Relax, Odango," he murmured against her bangs. "I'm just leaning against her tree. My back hurts."

His arms rearranged themselves around her, his fingers woven together in front of her stomach. She studied them from beneath the hood of her blanket, trying to find the spot on his hand that her lips has brushed yesterday, whether it was by that knuckle or this one. How, when she could still feel the tingle on her lips from the contact, as though it was branded there in a glittering constellation, could there not be some corresponding mark on his hand?

He was talking, she realized, and she forced herself out of her reverie, trying to ease herself back into the conversation without him noticing she had been distracted, because even if it was a dream she'd rather not be embarrassed –

"_Aluminum_?" she repeated in sudden confusion at one of the first words she caught. She twisted around to look at him. "What does aluminum have to do with anything?"

He gave her Darien's Dry Look. "You weren't listening at all, were you?"

She flushed guiltily. "Yes I was –

"Serena, how many times do I have to tell you that you can't lie?"

Even in her dreams he scolded her. Serena wondered with a little incredulity if that meant that she _liked_ when he scolded her? Dreams were supposed to be reflections of unacknowledged desires, after all, right? She shuddered a little and said deliberately, watching him closely, "You only have to tell me half as much as you used to, since Rini loves to tell me that, too."

He didn't react to her mention of Rini – at least, his arms around didn't loosen, and his face didn't become taut and stormy. Serena decided, a little disbelievingly, that she really _was_ dreaming. She had been pretty sure before, but now she was _completely_ sure, and with that absolute certainty, she snuggled further back into her blanket, now admitting to herself that she was actually snuggling against his chest and that sharp jut of his collarbone that she loved to feel beneath her chin.

As though he'd heard her thought, he laughed. "I was talking about weapons. You can only use your tiara as a shield or a sword, not both at the same time, right?"

Serena grimaced a little. She had so wanted to figure out how to use them both at the same time. Miss Lanai would have been impressed, and even more importantly, she would have been able to fight Bertie at the rink. "Right."

His hold around her had actually tightened; he actually seemed excited by her answer, not disappointed. "And would you say – is it the jewel in your tiara that allows you to channel energy out through it when it's in its other forms?"

Wow, and even in her dreams he was a total nerd. Did that mean that, subconsciously, Serena was attracted to his nerdy side? Okay, she did find it almost unbearably adorable when he started arguing about neurotransmoders or whatever with Asanuma and especially when he was wearing his reading glasses…

"_Odango._"

She flinched out of her thoughts as he blew a gust of icy air into her ear. "Hey!" she protested, yanking her blanket tight around her head and scowling at him. "You didn't have to make it cold!"

"Well, uncover your ears, and I'll do it with hot air this time."

She kept glaring, and his feigned innocent expression broke into a grin. "Fine. I won't do it again. _If_ you answer the question."

"What was the question again?"

"Your tiara." He nudged her head with his chin, as though making sure she paid attention this time. "Is it the jewel that lets you channel energy even when it's a shield or a sword?"

Serena considered this. She had never thought about it before, but there was a sparkling layer inside the tiara-sword and on the surface of the tiara-shield. Those layers were what she had always fed her energy into when she released a Twilight Flash.

"I guess that makes sense," she said, almost to herself. "The rest of it's softer, like gold…so I guess that layer's the jewel." She twisted around again, although with his tighter grip, she had to take an arm out of her blanket cocoon to grab a fistful of his tuxedo vest to pull herself around. "Why?"

He grinned down at her, shaking his bangs out of his eyes. One of his arms left her waist, and she felt the tremor in space as he reached into his subspace pocket. She watched curiously as he pulled a very long crystal shard from it.

No, not a crystal shard. A _sword_ made of crystal. Entirely of flawless, faceted crystal, clear as glass, winking at her in the moonlight.

Darien pried her hand from his vest and placed it on the sword's hilt. Her fingers curled around the cool crystal, marveling at how exactly the facets fit her hand.

Her eyes went to his, and he seemed to read the question there. "I know what your hand feels like," he said matter-of-factly, as though she should already know that. "Did your old sword have that grip? I imagined there had to be a reason you always lost hold of it so easily."

She nearly laughed. "Oh, it's already my _old_ sword, is it?"

His grin was not at all modest. "Why would you keep using that old model when you have a specimen of perfect workmanship like this?"

"So you made it?"

"With Mikai. We had the idea yesterday. The crystal substance is harder than diamond."

Serena shook her arm free of the blanket to swing the sword slowly to the left, then the right. The crystal blade gave more resistance to the air that she was accustomed to her tiara blade giving, but it also cut through it with a sharpness that her tiara blade, better suited to expelling energy than to slicing, lacked.

A thought occurred to her. She focused, and as she watched, the edge of the blade began to glow a soft silver. As though moonlight had penetrated the blade instead of shining onto it, tiny silver sparkles began to dance up and down the blade, like glitter shaken in a snow globe.

"Internal reflection," said his excited voice in her ear. Turning her head a little, she saw that he was watching the zooming sparkles, too. "You see it in diamonds. Any light that enters it gets trapped inside and reflected again and again. That's why diamonds sparkle so brightly."

Serena was impressed with herself. Even though it was Darien talking, it was her _dream_ version of Darien, which meant that the science-y stuff he was spouting right now was actually somewhere in her brain. Why hadn't she been able to pull this stuff out when she needed it for her chemistry exam?

"So," she said, leaning a little closer so that she could feel his throat move against her temple when he spoke. "This is made of diamond?"

"Yup," he said, and she did indeed feel his voice coming up through his throat as he spoke. "The energy you channel into it – like you did just now – should act like light does in a diamond and reflect itself thousands of times, multiplying and amplifying itself, and then the extra boost of energy you give it for a Twilight Flash should push the energy over its threshold and release it!"

Serena laughed at how eager he sounded and reached up to ruffle his hair. With mock consternation, she said, "Who knew the levels of nerdiness you and Mikai would fall to when you were left alone?"

He pushed his head against the side of hers, like a puppy begging to be petted some more, and she tousled it obligingly again. "Is that Serenaese for 'Thank you, Darien'?"

"Thank you, Darien AND Mikai," Serena corrected. She propped the sword on her lap, stroking its hilt unconsciously, hoping that she _would_ remember this when she woke up, even if it hurt to remember the affection she'd been able to share with Darien. If Darien and Mikai could actually make weapons like this –

As though he had read her mind, Darien began to tell her about the sais and bo staff – now more like a naginata, with all the modifications that an enthralled and dust-covered Mikai was making – that they had managed to create.

"Mikai said they should be New Year's gifts," he said, then caught her thoughtful look.

"We should have a New Year's Party," mused Serena, more to herself than to him.

"What? No we shouldn't. Haven't you noticed that all these big events seem to turn into youma magnets?" He began to tick them off on his gloved fingers. "Spring Fling, your birthday party, the Christmas festival – no way. We'll just stick a shiny bow on them and be done."

Serena shook her head, thinking. "Furuhata-san usually throws a New Year's Party every year. But they're not planning one this year because he's too sick." She looked at him, trying to understand why a figment of her subconscious would be against this. "How can we let the tradition be broken when this is the year he needs it most?"

Darien didn't answer her. He only smiled a sad smile that she rarely saw from the real Darien. He leaned his head against hers again, and they watched the moon sink in the sky until Serena woke up in her bed the next morning, blanketed by the scent of roses.

-

It was rather strange, Darien realized for the first time, that night apparently never fell in Elysion. It had been some time around three in the morning when he left Serena sleeping in her bed a few minutes ago, but here in the field of dreamflowers, the light was the lazy sunshine of afternoon.

He detransformed from his tuxedo back into his jeans and sweater and picked his way across the flowers to where a familiar winged and white-clad youth knelt among the flowers.

"My apologies, Darien-sama, give me but a moment to finish replacing this soil," said Helios without looking up from the delicate lavender orchid he tended. He sat back on his haunches, then, brushing the soil from his hands, and looked up. "How fares the young princess – Darien-sama! Your eyes!"

Darien grinned.

"You – you can _see_?" stammered Helios.

"Surprise," said Darien, still grinning.

"But – but – " Helios scrambled to his feet. "_How_?"

After his interlude with Serena, Darien was in an excellent mood. Excellent enough even to make jokes. "Would you believe it took a round of icicles tearing through my eyeballs?"

"And – but – " Helios drew closer, hovering as though he wanted to examine Darien's eyes more closely but didn't dare. "The Crystal healed them?"

"Yes."

"And you can see now?"

"Uh-huh."

"Then – but the Crystal did not heal them before," said Helios, half questioning.

"No." This had occurred to Darien, and it was something he had wanted to ask Helios, but the priest seemed as confused as he was about it. "You can't think of why?"

Helios shook his head slowly, eyes intent still on Darien's. "I wondered, when you told me what had happened, why the crystal had not worked to heal them. But it did not seem…wise, at the time, to ask. I had assumed that perhaps you did not yet have enough control over the crystal."

Darien frowned at this. "How could I have had enough control to kill Metallia but not to heal my eyes?" He remembered, then, the vagueness, almost as though he was half-asleep, as he had summoned the power to banish Metallia. "Ah. That was probably Endymion channeling the power to kill her."

Helios's eyes snapped into sharp focus, from Darien's irises to his pupils, searching. "What did you say?"

As best as he could careful to be ready in case somehow, here in Elsyion, being thought of by his priest, Endymion would stir and try to escape, Darien explained what Mikai had told them about flash-forms.

Darien had not come here ignorant to what he would be telling Helios: his beloved prince was/had been within his reach. Still existed, in a sense, and could exist again. And indeed, an expression of sadness and painful wistfulness came onto Helios's pale features as he listened.

When Darien had finished, he sighed and turned his head away, toward the gently rolling hills.

Darien did not want to ask, and even less did he want to know, but he had to. "Would you want him back?"

It was a moment before Helios spoke.

"You must understand, Darien-sama, that I became priest at a very young age. I was barely more than half a decade old. When King-dono and his Shittenou discovered me, I was brought immediately to Elysion, for my predecessor, as he died, had left part of an important prophecy. They needed the rest of it, and for that, they dared not wait to put me in Elysion so that when the prophecy blew, I would hear it. I have been here since then, never leaving, never seeing anyone but King-dono, and Endymion-sama, and yourself. Before you, they were the only two beings I knew."

Helios's voice was as blank as he could make it, but tears still clung to it.

"I love them very much, for they are the only people I have had to love. But I am not so ignorant of your own qualities and of Endymion-sama's faults that I would work against you to restore him. The one who is the stronger of the two of you will be the one who is in control. And the stronger one is the one who will be able to best protect us all from Chaos. That is the one I will follow."

It was not exactly an oath of loyalty, but even if Darien had thought that Helios would forsake his loyalties to Endymion, he would not have asked it of him. Knowing, now, of Helios's childhood that had been almost as lonely as his own, he could not feel as annoyed by Helios's loyalty to Endymion. He could not ask him to abandon that, not when he himself would never abandon Motoki and Asanuma.

He moved to other topics. "Can you think of a reason why the crystal only healed my eyes now, not before?"

"It is possible that you have only now gained enough control over the crystal to be able to carry out such a complex healing," said Helios, but although his voice was back to its usual thoughtful tone, it did not sound convinced. He hesitated. "It reminds me of stories that King-dono once told to me."

Darien raised an eyebrow in interest.

But the priest pursed his lips. "They were little more than bedtime stories. I do not know that there was much truth to any of them. I liked to hear of princes and the feats they accomplished with the Golden Crystal. There were some stories of blinded princes – but they were not quite like you."

"How were they different?"

"One merely wore a blindfold for several years in his youth as an artificial blindness. Another was blinded in a battle and waited for several years before using the Crystal to heal his eyes. Both princes felt that they relied too much upon their sight and wished to strengthen their other senses." Helios frowned. "If I am not mistaken, they were both engaged in wars with the Mercurians."

" They were very old stories," he said at the surprised expression on Darien's face. "Nearly all of the planets were at war with one another at one time or another before the Silver Millennium."

"Why is it significant that they were fighting with Mercurians?"

"Certain members of the Mercurian population have the ability to teleport," said Helios. "They were highly valued and used as soldiers or assassins. For a Terran prince fighting them, being highly aware, psychometrically, of one's surroundings, would allow one to quickly detect the Mercurian's presence when they teleport during combat, much more so than if one depends on one's vision."

"So what you're saying is that I stayed blind so that I wouldn't be as dependent on my vision." Darien's brow was creased. "But that would imply that…"

He frowned more deeply, reaching into his subspace pocket, where the Golden Crystal resided. It warmed slightly at his touch, as though acknowledging him. Maybe it wasn't such a crazy idea.

"The Golden Crystal's sentient," he finished slowly.

He wasn't sure if it was a statement or a question, and from Helios's slow blink, he didn't either.

"Beings have wondered for eons if that is so," he said. "It was especially a pet project of the Mercurians, I believe, to find out."

Darien thought of Mercury. Thought of the fact that the things that had gouged his eyes out, forcing them to heal, had been shards of ice. "Mercurians, huh..."

"Perhaps your Shittenou's supposition that Mercury is helping you is not so very far off," said Helios. "If she is the one who was truly responsible for it."

"Something's missing from the equation, though." Darien shook his head. "If she plans to help us, why is she staying away?"

Why not come and join the ragtag group they had formed? Did she fear that they would attack her? Serena would never let them do anything to her –

Well, wait. Serena would never let them do anything to _Ami_. Perhaps even Serena would do something to Mercury, to bring back Ami. If the Mercury flash-form wished to stay in control, then of course she would not wish to come to them and risk that control being taken away.

But he still felt like there was something more. Endymion had never had the slightest compunction about coming out, as though he could easily take down anyone who tried to deny his control. He supposed that Mercury was only a Senshi, not in possession of an omnipotent crystal, but still…

"What you have told me about flash forms has begun to make me think, Darien-sama," said Helios abruptly. "When Sailor Jupiter was attacked in her dwelling, it was when her flash-form, then, had been surfacing?"

"Yes," said Darien, then realized what Helios was getting at. His golden eyes widened. "That woman. The one who showed up in my apartment."

"Jupiter's flash-form no longer surfaced after she came. Somehow, that woman stopped them."

"Do you think it was Mercury?" Darien shook his head, eyes unfocusing. "But she had red eyes, that was very clear. And she was taller than Mercury."

"I think that perhaps it is not outside the realm of possibly to suppose that there is a connection between the two," said Helios. "This woman, who must have been either a Senshi or a Chaos agent if she was able to immobilize you, acted to stop Jupiter's flash-form from emerging, and we can assume that she attempted to do the same for you. Why, if she did that for the two of you, would she not also have attempted to do so for Mercury? I think that if you can speak to Mercury, you may be able to find out who this woman was and why she wished to your flash-forms from surfacing then."

"Ugh." Darien rose back to his feet. "Every time we find out something new, a hundred new questions pop up."

"But you can see again, Darien-sama," Helios reminded him. "Surely this is a source of happiness."

"Yes." Darien shook himself out of the bog of dismal thoughts, remembering Serena's adorable blush when he caught her staring at his hands instead of listening to what he was saying. "Yes. I'll try to make Mikai take me to Mercury. Take care, Helios."

Helios seemed slightly taken aback, then he smiled. "You as well, Darien-sama."

-

"Mom," said Serena around a mouthful of bagel that morning. "Are we doing anything for New Year's?"

Ikuko smoothed down the advice column she had been reading in the newspaper and tapped her chin. "Well, since the Furuhatas aren't throwing a party this year, I thought maybe we could go to one of the festivals. I haven't worn a kimono in ages…"

Serena's mind was made up. "Don't make any plans yet, okay?" She swallowed the rest of her bagel and ran from the room, to the phone.

She called Lita first.

"Hey, Serena! I was just about to call you, but I wasn't sure if you were up yet."

Serena looked at the clock. It was ten o'clock. "I'm glaring at you the phone, Lita. Do you really think I'm so lazy as to not be up by ten o'clock?"

The other end of the line was quiet. Then an amusement-tinted, "No comment."

"Lita!" Serena laughed despite herself. "Oh, why were you going to call?"

Lita's amusement morphed to excitement. "I had an idea. About New Year's."

Serena gasped. "No way! I bet we're thinking the same thing! Let's both say our idea at the same time, and we can see! Ready? One, two, three –"

_"Holding a party since the Furuhatas can't do it!"_ they exclaimed in unison.  
"Yes!" Serena squealed. "High five through the phone! Let's have a meeting so we can see if everyone else wants to do it."

Lita snorted. "Like it matters if they WANT to. We'll make them."

"You're right," agreed Serena, starry-eyed, already imagining how happy Furuhata-san would probably be. "Here, I'll call. Where should we meet?"

"Everyone can come to my place. I just put a batch of muffins in the oven, and I don't want to leave them."

"Okay. See you soon!" Serena hung up and rang Asanuma's cell phone.

He answered on the first ring. "Aren't you up a little early, Serena-chan? It's only ten in the morning."

"Why does EVERYONE say that!"

Asanuma laughed.

"For your information, I can't even remember the last time I slept past ten!" Serena informed him. "I even got up early on Christmas! Anyways, should you really be biting the hand that fed you?"

"If I remember right, your MOM fed me, not you."

"My mother is mine, therefore, we are the same," preached Serena. "Listen, are you free today?"

"Nope. I cost twenty bucks an hour."

Serena made a rude noise into the mouthpiece. "Fine, charge it to Darien's account. I want to have a meeting this afternoon."

"Ah. Okay. At Dare's again?"

"No, Lita's. She's baking."

"I see," said Asanuma. "I can be there in about an hour, is that cool?"

"Uh-huh," said Serena. Then, "But, um, could you call everyone else and tell them?"

A confused silence: "…"

"It's just, my mom needs the phone, so I can't call myself," explained Serena, twirling the phone cord uncomfortably around her fingers. This was _exactly _why she shouldn't have let herself give in to that dream about Darien last night; now she remembered it perfectly, and it made her quite sure that if she talked to him, she would probably stammer and somehow end up listening to his voice instead of his words and end up being caught fantasizing and not listening, and then he would _know_, and then – she blew out a whoosh of air. He would be forced to tell her, once again, that he didn't like her that way, and it would be unbearably awkward, and she just didn't want to go through that washer cycle of rejection and guilt all over again.

"You still there, Serena?"

"Huh? Yeah!" She had a feeling she might flush and stammer when she saw him at Lita's, but at least then everyone else would be around. Lita would elbow her if she started doing anything too obvious.

"I can call them," said Asanuma, though he sounded suspicious.

"Thanks!" she said hurriedly. "I'll see you soon!" And she hung up before he could ask any questions.

As she and Rini began their walk to Lita's apartment a while later, Rini was very quiet. Serena noticed after a few minutes that there were dark crescents under the little girl's eyes. She caught Rini by the wrist and knelt to inspect them.

"I'm sorry," she said, cringing internally. "I probably talked in my sleep and kept you up, didn't I?"

Only as Serena's hands brushed the dark smudges beneath them did Rini's eyes snap into focus, meeting Serena's.

"What?" she said. "No. No, you didn't… I just…stayed up really late reading."

Her words were too hesitant. Still on her knees on the sidewalk, Serena searched the little girl's eyes. Normally, when she could tell that Rini was lying and didn't want to talk about something, she let it go. But there was something in Rini's tone, in her hesitation, that seemed almost to be pleading Serena to ask, to make her talk about it.

She thought for a moment. She wished that she hadn't had such a vivid dream last night, so that she would have been sleeping lightly enough to wake up if nightmares were bothering Rini. The little girl had had them a few times before, and she had a tendency to make small noises and curl into a ball under her blankets on the futon next to Serena's bed.

"I wonder," said Serena, "what nightmares really are."

Rini flinched. Her eyes flicked into Serena's before skittering away again.

"When I was little, my mom told me they were our minds' way of thinking about things that we were afraid to do or afraid might happen, because we try not to think about them when we're awake." She thought about her nightmares, about the taste of hot blood and the cold kiss of metal. "But I think most of mine are about things that happened in the past. About things that I wish I'd done differently. And my mind keeps bringing them back to me so that I'll remember not to make the same mistake."

Rini's eyes had come back to her, watching intently. "Memories," she whispered.

Serena nodded. "Are your nightmares like that?"

The little girl's eyes didn't leave hers. They stayed on them, searching. "I was really mean to Asanuma before I left.

Serena's heart wrung.

"Really, really mean," whispered Rini.

Serena squeezed her hands. "And that's what you dreamed about?"

The little girl nodded. Though she said nothing more, her blue eyes clung to Serena's, wide and fearful.

"I think that no matter how mean you were, Asanuma knows you love him," Serena said gently. "Asanuma's good with that kind of love." She smiled. "I think it's his favorite kind."

"You're talking about Darien and Rei," Rini said. But she didn't look comforted. Only more pained. "Why does he love them, Serena?"

Serena was taken aback. It was a question she'd asked herself, sometimes, especially where Rei was concerned. Lip caught between her teeth, she studied Rini, trying to figure out why the little girl wanted to know. Was she jealous of Darien and Rei? Did she feel like she was the same as them?

She began slowly. "I think… Asanuma feels like Rei and Darien need him. I – I could be wrong. This is just what I've come up with based on my experience. But I think that love is…" She trailed off, struggling to put it into words. "We all like to feel important, right? We want to feel like we're needed?"

She waited to Rini to nod. "So, I think you spend as much time as you can with people who make you feel like that. Who make you feel special and like they need you, and like you're the only person who can do for them what you do."

"So people only befriend each other because they need to feel important?" Rini sounded…disappointed?

Serena laughed a little, uncomfortably. "I told you this is just what I thought I'd figured out from my experience. Maybe I'm a horrible person."

Rini was not laughing at all as she looked at Serena. "You're not."

Serena's laugh died. She sniffled a little, swiping the back of her mitten across her eyes. "Thanks." She cleared her throat. "I don't think it's just that we need to feel important. If you think about it a different way, feeling important is just a side effect, and the real reason we're friends with people who make us feel needed is that we instinctively seek out people we can help, people whose lives we feel like we can make better."

This more positive interpretation of love surprised her; it made sense even though she had only just made it up because she didn't want Rini to think she was a heartless people-user only making friends because she wanted to feel important.

She looked at Rini and saw the girl still looking at her, waiting expectantly.

Serena thought. "I think Asanuma likes Rei and Darien because they're both so serious and he's so…well, you know how he is. Probably he feels like he can teach them how to recognize happiness. That's one of the best things he has to offer, and other people might not need it so much. Like Motoki, he's pretty good at seeing when he's happy on his own, so he doesn't need Asanuma so much, that way. But Darien and Rei tend to resist happiness, I think, and so they do need what Asanuma has to give them."

"So all they do is take." Rini's voice was bitter. "They don't love him back."

"Yes they do."

"You don't know that. You haven't even seen Rei in months."

Serena ignored the sting from this. "I know they do. Just like I know that your Asanuma in the future definitely still loves you, no matter what you did before you left."

Rini shook her head, angrily. "You don't know that! You don't even know my Asanuma!"

"No, but I know you," said Serena simply.

Rini shook her head again, but slowly, as though she wanted to give up. "That doesn't mean anything."

"Rini." With affectionate exasperation, Serena planted her forehead against her little girl's. "How about this? When you get back to the future, if Asanuma's crazy enough to be mad at you for whatever you did before you left, you call Future Me, okay? I'll come steal you, and you can live with me again." Her eyes sparkled. "Does that sound good? There'll be tons of new manga for us to read by then, and I'll be old enough to drive on my own, and we can drive to the beach and have all sorts of fun – what's wrong?" She rocked back on her heels at that expression on Rini's fact. "It doesn't sound fun?"

Rini shook her head violently.

Then she nodded just as violently. "No, it does," she said. Her voice was a little hoarse. "It sounds really fun."

She looked up at Serena from beneath her bangs. "And you won't let me read anything but comic books until sixth grade, right?"

The words struck at something in Serena's memory. Gasping a little, because she couldn't believe Rini had remembered that, and because it struck so close to her own wish, she laughed and gave Rini an Eskimo kiss. "Right." She grabbed her hand. "Now let's go to Lita's before all those muffins get cold!"

-

"Would you talk already?" said Rei, tired of receiving the girl's surreptitious, darting glances from the other side of the tiny campfire. Tired, too, of wondering what the girl, who hadn't even asked why Sailor Mars' civilian form had kidnapped her, was thinking. Was she planning to run at the chance she got?

The girl began to say something, then cleared her throat.

Rei realized that they had been traveling for over two days without speaking at all. Traveling first by rooftops and then through the wilderness, not daring to go by plane or ship yet lest Haruka or Michiru track them, with the girl always on her back, she had stopped when she needed to use the bathroom or eat, and the girl had followed suit. There had been no need to talk. It was as though she was back in the month she had spent on her own in the woods before Michiru and Haruka tracked her down, only with a heavier backpack.

"Do you hate him?"

Rei blinked against the darkness. For a moment, she thought that her imagination must have put her own words into the girl's mouth. But then the girl repeated the question, and it was the same.

"Who?" said Rei, almost harshly.

"That man, the Senator." Her words were rushed and mumbled and frightened, the way Ami often talked to Luna. Rei feels sickness in her gut. "I thought he was your father."

Rei didn't say anything.

"I saw the pictures," gabbled the girl, then, and again, she was like Ami, talking fast when a silence stretched for too long. "There are pictures of you, in the house."

"Not of me." Her father would sooner buy something from a watch from a one-hundred yen store than have pictures of her in his house. "They were probably my mom."

The girl was quiet. Then, quietly, "She died?"

"Just because I said you should talk doesn't mean you've got a free pass to be as nosy as you want." Rei shoved her head back against the tree. "Go to sleep."

The girl curled up tighter around herself on the carpet of rotting leaves. She didn't ask any more questions. But nor did she fall asleep.

After nearly half an hour had passed without the girl's breathing collapsing into the slower, deeper respiration of slumber, Rei spoke.

"If you're not sleeping, we might as well keep moving. Come on."

The girl took a long time standing up as Rei extinguished the fire and brushed leaves over it to cover the charred pit.

"You can walk for a while," said Rei, whose back had grown stiff and sore from having the pre-teen's weight, slight as it was, dragging her down for nearly a hundred kilometers.

But barely had Rei taken three steps before the girl stumbled and fell behind her into the crackling leaves.

Rei turned, looking into the darkness. "What is it?" she said sharply.

"Nothing," gasped the girl's voice.

Rei realized something suddenly. "Are you hurt?"

The girl said nothing. Rei, in one of the lightning-fast movements that Mercury had drilled into her, seized her leg.

The girl hissed. Rei summoned a bit of fire to her fingertips, illuminating the wound on the inside of her knee. Some of the synthetic fiber from the girl's pajamas, which she was still wearing under a coat that Rei had taken from her Subspace pocket, had burned into the shiny patch of burned skin. The girl had been burned, though thankfully not by spirit-fire.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

The girl ducked her head and stammered out something intelligible.

"It doesn't matter," muttered Rei. Mercury hadn't packed anything medicinal. Some brain she was. The brain wasn't horrible; there wasn't charring or sloughing, but the spot where it was located, stretching the skin every time she stepped, was probably fairly painful.

She took a water bottle from her subspace pocket. Her own fairly dirty shirt was made of a rough material that would chafe at the burned tissue, but the girl's pajama shirt was made of a perfect material and had been kept clean by Rei's coat.

Rei had the girl take off the coat. Then, for she needed two hands to rip off the girl's sleeve, she transferred the tiny balls of fire to the air, hovering there.

The second that Rei's hands ripped the fabric away, the girl's hand shot up to clap over her arm. But it wasn't fast enough. Rei saw, in the flickering light, the long ropy tissue that ridged the girl's upper arm from her elbow up.

"How did you get these scars?"

The girl kept her head down and didn't say anything.

Rei's hands seized her arms and shook her. "How did you get them?"

But the girl kept staring at her knees, her bangs covering her eyes, and said nothing.

Rei let go. She wet the ripped sleeve with water from the bottle and knotted it around the girl's knee, covering the burn.

"Sorry," whispered the girl as Rei wordlessly crouched in front of her and pulled her arms around her neck.

"What do you have to be sorry for?" said Rei harshly.

As soon as she heard the harshness of her voice, she wanted to take it back. She was disgusted with herself. She wanted to feel older and more mature, wanted to think that Mercury was right when she said that she had changed. But she had just proved that she hadn't. She still guarded her fears and hatreds too jealously to notice anything about the people around her.

"Hey," she said, not even sure if the girl was still awake or not, for her breathing was slow on Rei's shoulder. "My mom died when I was still in grade school. I don't remember her much."

The girl didn't say anything. It took Rei a moment to realize that the feeling that filled her at the girl's lack of response was disappointment. She had thought that she might be able to atone by forcing this honesty out of her mouth. But the girl hadn't even heard her. She was asleep.

"She was really pretty."

Rei started.

The girl didn't seem to notice; her voice was sleepy. "My mom was, too. But she died when I was little. She named me, though. Hotaru."

She fell silent, and for some reason, the silence felt expectant.

Rei repeated, "Hotaru." And awkwardly, she said, more out of courtesy than honesty, "It's pretty."

"Thanks," murmured Hotaru. "Did your mother name you?"

"I…don't know." Rei had never wondered before. And yet…for her name to mean 'spirit of fire'… Her mother had been a miko like she was, before she went into acting.

"I think she did," mumbled the girl, her voice dropping off. "I think she knew…"

She dropped off into sleep, leaving Rei to her own thoughts as she jogged through the dark trails.

Had her mother known? If she had, why would she have named Rei so obviously? Shouldn't she have hoped that her daughter would never be forced to become a youma-killing Senshi on the run? Tried to hide her from her fate and named her something safe and normal, like Hana or Yuki.

No. She told herself to stop. It was pointless trying to figure out why her mother had named her Rei. She knew the conclusion that she wanted herself led to: that her mother had named her that because she was special, had named her that because she had wanted Rei to find out how special she was even if her mother wasn't there in person to tell her. She wanted herself to feel comforted by the fact that somehow her mother had known what Rei would become and had acknowledged it, embraced it, named her so that Rei would know that she had known and had approved, not dismayed.

And such a conclusion was idiotic. It was ridiculous, to treasure such a name given to you by a person whom you could barely remember. How could you know their intentions? You couldn't.

The girl was being ridiculous. What did her name mean? Hotaru Tomoe. Firefly rising from the grave. What kind of a person would treasure a name like that instead of resenting the person who'd named them such a depressing thing?

A sad, pathetic one.

Rei didn't want to be a sad and pathetic person.

And she found, to her slightly alarmed surprise, that she didn't want the girl on her back to be one, either.

What did it mean, wanting someone else to be strong?

-

Serena, Rini, Motoki, and Asanuma were all ensconced in Lita's apartment with pumpkin muffins and mugs of hot chocolate when Lita opened the door to Darien.

And someone else.

"Whoah, whoah, whoah," exclaimed Asanuma when Mikai walked in behind their black-haired friend. "What's HE doing here? I didn't call him!"

"I was at Darien's when you called," said the green-haired man, shooting Asanuma a grin. "I was there all night, actually."

Darien rolled his eyes as Serena choked on a laugh and everyone else exchanged raised eyebrows. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Tsukino," he said, pushing her where she sat on the stool she'd taken at Lita's breakfast bar and squishing her against the countertop.

This only served to make Serena laugh harder, inhaling a bit of muffin. She began to cough, and Darien thumped her on the back, though perhaps the thumps were too little like thumps and too much like gentle strokes of his fingertips to be helpful. She went pink and started to cough harder.

At the end of the counter, Asanuma was interrogating Mikai. "What were you doing at Darien's apartment?"

Mikai opened his mouth to explain, but then his attention caught on something else. "Holy shit," he said, his eyes going wide as they landed on Rini. The brown-haired child sat on Lita's floor in front of one of the potted trees, prodding its leaves.

Mikai spun around and looked at Darien, who was still bearing down on Serena. Then he looked back at Rini, then back again. (Lita and Motoki, exchanging glances, watched this with great amusement.)

"You've been holding out on me, Darien," said Mikai at last. His voice didn't quite manage to hit a joking note.

Asanuma's laugh rang out.

"FINALLY!" he crowed. "Something Kentaro doesn't know! Rini, you're officially my favorite person in the world!"

He grabbed her up from the carpet and swung her around in a hug. Rini flung a startled, almost alarmed look at Serena, who managed to stop coughing long enough to smile reassuringly.

"She's got to be somehow related to you." Mikai looked at Darien, then Serena. "But you've _really_ been holding out on me if she's related to you the way I'm thinking she's related to you."

Motoki and Lita were both chortling now. Darien was grateful to see his sandy-haired friend laughing again, but he wished it was because of something other than this. He sighed and moved away from Serena, pinching his nose. How to start?

"She's from the future," he said first, bluntly. "The youma that have been attacking Tokyo the past few months are trying to find her."

He stopped and hedged.

Motoki took pity on him. "She's Darien's daughter from about fifteen years in the future. The daughter he has with the Moon Princess."

Mikai shut his mouth. He looked supremely puzzled. He was eyeing Serena thoughtfully, much in the same way that everyone had after finding out that the Moon Princess was Rini's mother, as though surprised it wasn't Serena.

Serena tangled her ankles in the stool legs and pretended not to notice his scrutiny, biting into another muffin and trying to ignore the paths that Darien's hand had taken on her back.

"Well," said Mikai at last, "I feel gypped. I gave you a free game of Twenty Questions yesterday, but you didn't see fit to tell me that you have a daughter from the future living with you."

"She's not living with me," said Darien with a mixture of reluctance and exasperation. "She's living with Serena."

"Ohhh," drew out Mikai. Then he blinked. "Wow! Who would've thought that Straight Arrow Darien would turn out to be a dead-beat dad?"

He shook his head with dramatic disappointment before turning back to watch Rini, who was talking to Asanuma, with distinct interest. "So. What's she like?"

Darien raised a brow. "Go find out."

Serena, watching the black-haired youth, rather thought that he was hiding a grin. A grin that seemed to be, if she was not mistaken – or dreaming again – one of pride?

"Let's watch," he muttered to her as Mikai ambled over to where Rini sat with Asanuma. "I have a feeling this is going to be entertaining."

Serena did a double-take at his face, then beamed. He really _was_ proud of her! She turned her face back to watch Rini and Mikai, so pleased by his this development that she quite forgot about acting strangely in front of him. When he crossed his arms and leaned his shoulder against hers as he propped himself against Lita's counter to watch, she didn't even pull away.

"Look, Rini," stage-whispered Asanuma as Mikai plopped down on the armchair in front of them. "Some sort of disgusting mold just started growing on Lita's couch. Should we tell her to get the bleach?"

"Bleaching that hair would be doing him a favor," said Rini, raising a brow as she looked at Mikai.

"I can hear you, you know," said Mikai. He fingered his green hair as though hurt by her appraisal.

"I can talk, you know," returned Rini. "If you wanted to know who I was, you could have come over here and asked me."

"I apologize, Hime-sama," said Mikai with great solemnity. "I didn't want to insult you by asking if you were related to that angsty geek if you weren't."

Lita snorted, Darien said, "Who's calling who a geek?" and Rini cracked a smile, much to Asanuma's dismay.

"No offense, you guys," said Motoki, who was also smiling at the interaction. "But some of my cousins are visiting today, and my mom'll kill me if I'm not home soon. Can we get down to business?"

"Wait!" exclaimed Asanuma. "First we have to talk about something that's even more important than business!"

"Ah, yes." Motoki laced his hands behind his head, exchanging a grin with Asanuma. "I _do_ have time to know why Mikai was at Darien's apartment."

"Me, too," said Lita, her Shield-Torturing grin flickering to life.

"It's a secret," said Darien, winking down at Serena.

Serena blinked, confused. Why was he winking? Because of their joke about his man-crush on Mikai? That didn't seem quite right…

"Why all the winking?" demanded Asanuma. "Serena! Do you know why he was there?"

_Uh-oh_. A realization struck Serena. It sent blood spiraling immediately up her cheeks. No way, PLEASE, no way… She leaned away from where Darien's sleeve brushed hers. In her dream, Darien had said that he and Mikai were making weapons at his apartment. And here, in reality, Mikai had been at Darien's apartment. Which meant…

She remembered something Darien had said something to her, on Christmas Eve. _"We never have dreams this happy."_

Of _course_! How had she been so _stupid_? She slapped her hands to her face and dragged her fingers down it, trying to pull the blush and the embarrassment from her face.

"Serena! What's wrong?"

Serena snatched her hands from her face and sat back up straight, smiling, waving her friends off. "Ha ha, I'm okay! I'm okay! I just remembered something! That's all!"

"Remembering _what_?" Asanuma said suspiciously.

Serena was still blushing. She wouldn't meet Darien's eyes, though she felt his on hers. Oh, oh, but now she had to reconsider everything, didn't she? She had been able to convince herself that Christmas Eve and Christmas day had been a fluke, that Darien had just been so relieved to have his vision back that he had been so affectionate, so intimate. She hadn't let herself think anything more about it. But if that had been for real last night, him putting his arms around her and letting her snuggle beneath his chin, what did it mean?

She felt her hopes zinging into hyperspeed again and tried to snatch at them, to stuff them back inside, but they spread as inexorably as a blush, bright and warm and uncontrollable. Her feelings didn't _care_ if she had promised Miss Lanai, if Darien had a Moon Princess waiting for him, if Rini was –

"Never mind all that," came Lita's voice, authoritative and no-nonsense. "Let's get down to business."

Serena looked at her friend gratefully, feeling the heat on her face recede back down her neck. Lita winked – as subtly as only Lita could wink – at her and continued, "Serena and I had an idea about New Year's. We were thinking we should put on the New Year's party that your parents usually host. There's enough of us to get everything put together by the thirty-first."

Motoki looked around. His eyes were wide, hopeful. "You guys would really do that?"

"Toki! What do you take us for? Heartless losers?" Asanuma exclaimed. "Maybe SOME of us are – " He cast glances Darien and Mikai's ways. " – but the rest of us aren't! Of course we'll do it, man!"

Motoki grinned. "Okay. Okay! Awesome! Here, um, Leets, do you have a piece of paper? I can start writing a list of all the food we usually make – and we'll have to have some of your zucchini bread, my dad really loves that – and Serena, remember that punch from last year?"

Rini leaned forward, past Asanuma. "I can make baby carrots," she said, almost shyly. "And strawberries."

Motoki grinned at her. "Really? Great! Strawberries are out of season right now! We should definitely have a fruit and veggie platter, it's always good to be healthy…"

"I know what we definitely need to have," said Darien, leaning over the couch to watch Motoki write the list. "Put odangos on the list."

"What? Darien's a cannibal, he wants to eat Serena!" gasped Asanuma.

"Wait, I can beat that," said Lita, grabbing Motoki's hand in her own and writing on the list, in slightly sloppy letters, 'MOCHI.'

"For Usa-chan!" exclaimed Motoki. Even Darien laughed.

"Okay, okay!" said Serena, planting her fists on her hips and regarding them all indulgently as they all chortled. "I think we've all had enough of the Serena food jokes."

"Nope," Rini said slyly. "I'm still hungry."

Asanuma high-fived her.

-

For the second time in as many days, Serena escaped the apartment before Darien could get her on her own to talk. He had seen the realization flash through her eyes, and everyone had seen the blush explode on her face, when he alluded to their conversation the previous night. He had been pleasantly surprised and slightly confused last night when she let him hold her and when she hadn't pulled immediately away when he did some of the things he had done – blowing in her ear was one of the more daring things that came to mind – but it hadn't occurred to him that she might think she was dreaming.

Today, though, the possibility had occurred to him when she clapped her hands to her flushing face, and it certainly would explain her ease with him last night.

But now, he was quite certain that she realized that she had been awake, not dreaming. And he was equally certain that this realization was probably going to result in her avoiding him again or something equally bad. He needed to head that off before it happened.

Even if it meant braving the Tsukino household with Kenji Tsukino in it.

As he walked down the street – Mikai had taken his car to the shop, promising to have it good as new by New Year's – Darien became aware of the sharpening of his awareness that he and Helios had discussed. It had been present before, of course, but only now, when he was consciously aware of it, did he notice how much deeper his perception extended.

He could see the sheen of the ice on the curbs, but could also feel it, a crusting, less dense against the denser asphalt and cement, easily collapsed into water. He could see the businessman walking in his suit a few steps ahead of him, but he could also hear him, his pulse fast and forceful to shove against the plaque hardening his arteries. He could see the remaining leaves of the trees aesthetically planted along the sidewalk, but he could also taste, from the oxygen escaping their stomata, which leaves were dying and about to fall and which were still living.

These things, which when he could see, he may never have concentrated hard enough to focus on, now came to him as second nature. He was operating at this deeper level, rather than only descending to it when he needed it. It was almost like sensing all things the way he sensed Serena.

He sensed Serena now, as he rounded the corner onto her street. She was warm and laughing, but the unease that had rippled through her Lita's apartment threaded through her aura like messy stitches.

Darien's aura was filled with his own unease as he saw that Kenji Tsukino's car was indeed parked in the driveway. He sighed, debated the idea of coming back later that night instead of now, but by then, who knew what sort of reasons and justification and decisions Serena might have come up with? Besides, coming to her bedroom window at night probably wouldn't contribute to the feeling of platonicness that would keep her comfortably interacting with him. It had more of a Romeo-Juliet vibe.

Ikuko answered the door almost immediately. "Why, hello, Darien, come in, come in!" She stepped back, beaming as he presented her with a bouquet of flowers he'd conjured on the way over. "Thank you!" She looked up from sniffing the flowers, eyes shrewd suddenly. "Serena brought you the food, didn't she, or did she eat it all herself?"

He laughed. "She brought it, Ikuko-san. Thank you very much for it." He and Mikai had actually eaten nearly all of it last night. "I had to save the ambrosia for Serena, though."

"No, you go ahead and eat it, dear." Ikuko flapped her hand, shutting the door with the other. "We always have the ingredients for that here, she can have it whenever she wants if SHE WOULD JUST STOP READING MANGA FOR LONG ENOUGH TO MAKE IT HERSELF," she called loudly, clearly intending this last for Serena.

Laughter came from the kitchen. "I am, Mom, come look!"

Ikuko looked at Darien. "She came home from Lita's today wanting me to make ambrosia with her for the party you all are planning, but I know that when Serena says, Mom, make something with me, she means, Mom, make something FOR me – wait!" Ikuko spun around, Serena's words from the kitchen apparently sinking in for the first time. "She's in the kitchen? You're making it, Serena? Wait, you have to make sure you don't brown the marshmallows – " She hastened to the kitchen. "Excuse me, Darien, please sit down with Kenji and I'll be back in a moment!"

Darien would rather have followed her to the kitchen to see what Serena was up to – actually, he would rather have done anything rather than sit down with Kenji Tsukino – but he had known coming in that this would be a risk.

Swallowing a sigh, he sat down on the loveseat where he and Serena had sat together many times while her family was gone last spring, across from where Kenji sat in the armchair watching the baseball game on TV.

Kenji flicked a glance at him from above his glasses. "Back again, boy?"

"Yes, sir." Darien imagined that if he was Asanuma or Motoki, he could have come up with a more creative response or at least one that might have pleased Kenji, but on second thought, Kenji was determined to dislike him anyway, so his responses didn't matter. He felt somewhat consoled.

Kenji grunted. "It's vacation time, you know. You might let a man spend some time with his family in peace."

Darien kept himself from flicking a sardonic look at the TV Kenji was watching with none of his family members in sight, but only barely. "I won't intrude for very long, sir. I only have a question for Ikuko-san."

_That_ caught Kenji's attention. "For Ikuko? Not Serena?"  
But just then Rini came down the stairs. She paused on the steps and eyed Darien warily.

Her wariness seemed to please Kenji immensely. "Well, hello, pumpkin, I haven't seen you all morning!" He set down the remote and held out his arms. "How's my girl today? Did you already read all those new books?"

Rini smiled a little, coming around the couch to give him a hug. "Only half of them, Kenji-jii-chan. Serena stole the other half."

"The manga half, I bet," said Kenji knowingly.

Rini grinned. "Yup." She hopped off his lap. "I'm off for some reconnaissance."

"Have Sammy help you," called Kenji after her. "He knows all Serena's good hiding places."

"Ha!" came Serena's voice from the kitchen. "He only thinks he does!" Then came a shriek, and the sound of the smoke alarm, and an exasperated "Serena!" from Ikuko.

Rini cackled – Darien did a double take; yes, it had definitely come from Rini – and pounded back up the stairs.

Kenji caught him staring after her. "Ha," he said with satisfaction. "You may be able to steal my daughter, but my niece still likes me best."

Darien would very much like to see what Kenji's reaction would be to the news that Rini was actually his daughter. It was a strange feeling. Just as the realization of how he actually felt a little proud of how witty Rini was this afternoon had felt strange. Realizing that he felt hurt by knowing that what Kenji said was true – Rini did like him better than she liked Darien, her own father – felt strange, too.

"Well." Ikuko came back in, hair slightly mussed but otherwise no worse for the wear from whatever fiasco had occurred in the kitchen. "Did you need to talk to Serena, Darien?"

Darien refocused. "Actually, I was hoping for your expertise, Ikuko. I wondered if you had an easy curry recipes I could learn?"

Ikuko blinked. So did Kenji. They may have been less shocked, thought Darien wryly, if he had come and asked for their daughter's hand in marriage rather than for a simple curry recipe.

"Well, of course," said Ikuko, recovering. "But I don't usually make curry."

"Oh?" Darien let his voice and face show surprise and faint disappointment. "I'm sorry to have bothered you, then…"

"No, wait," said Ikuko, lifting a hand. "Serena!" she called. "Can you come in here?"

Serena leaned trough the door a minute later. There was rather a lot of whipped cream and flour on her face, so much that even Ikuko looked surprised, and Darien wondered if she had put it on her face purposefully to try to hide the pink flush that was creeping up her cheeks as she nodded a polite hello at him.

Ikuko turned back to Darien. "What I mean is, when we have curry, _I_ don't make it. Serena does. She's very good at it. Serena, Darien needs a curry recipe, why don't you go to the kitchen and show him how it works? I wouldn't mind curry for dinner tonight. I feel like a break from cooking." She dropped onto the couch beside Kenji, who was already standing up to protest, and swung her feet into his lap. "Why don't you give me a massage, dear?"

Smothering a laugh at Ikuko's efficient treatment of her husband, Darien followed Serena into the kitchen.

She spun almost as soon as they were out of her parents' sight, crossing her arms over her apron. "You already know how to make curry. I made it with you at your apartment tons of times. "

Her words stumbled despite her crossed arms, as though they caused her pain. He understood why: it hurt to think of that brief first month of summer when there had been no youma and they had been together more than they had been apart with nothing larger to worry about than getting a not-squeaky cart at the grocery store. When they hadn't known about the prophecy and his connection to the princess.

He missed that.

She shook her head, as though she could hear his thoughts and she was denying them. "What's with the pretending?"

"I needed an excuse to talk to you with your dad around," said Darien honestly.

Serena's crossed arms tightened but became more like a hug around her middle than a combative gesture. "What about?"

He sighed, dug his hand into his hair. He spoke in a rush. "Last night – would I be correct in assuming that you thought you dreamed it and only realized at Lita's today that it really happened?"

Serena was turning pink again. "No! That's silly!" She turned to the fridge and opened it, bending to reach something in one of the drawers. "I knew it wasn't a dream," she continued carelessly. "Remember? You're the one who said we never have dreams that happy."

She jerked suddenly, then, hitting her head on the shelf above her. She yanked her head out, her face still pink, and looked at him, babbling, "I meant getting the sword. I was really happy that you gave me that. That's how I knew it wasn't a dream. Because of the sword…" She laughed a little uncontrollably and ducked back down to pull more vegetables from the refrigerator.

Darien kept his hand clenched in his hair so that he couldn't reach for her the way he really, really wanted to. He hardly knew what to say, too distracted by his own feelings at the way she had just implied that she had been really happy last night. How could he focus on being strategic when she had just said that? How could he make her think that he only wanted to be friends when she said things that made him want to grab her and swing her around?

Serena set a package of chicken and then a bag of carrots on the counter and then reached for the spice rack. "So don't worry," she said, her back to him. "I knew I wasn't dreaming. Was that all you wanted to ask?"

"No!" Darien's voice came out much more forceful than he had thought it would. He cut himself off, wide-eyed, and stared at her equally surprised blue ones.

He shook his head, then, digging his hand into his hair. "God, this is really…"

"Awkward?" she suggested at the same time he finished his sentence: "…awkward."

Their eyes met again. A snort escaped Darien, and Serena smiled back, her apprehensive expression retreating briefly.

"Jinx," they said in unison. Now Darien grinned outright, and Serena was laughing.

Darien put his hand over his mouth, miming silence, and motioned at her to go on.

"I wasn't going to say anything." She shook her head, still smiling. "Go ahead."

His smile dimmed. He lowered his hand. "What I…what I wanted to ask…"

This was impossible. How had he been planning to fix this? If he told her that him holding her last night meant anything, she would probably be hurt. And then she would never be able to believe in the sincerity of any of his actions, after this and after what he'd told her that day in the hospital, and that would ruin more than her avoiding him now would.

But it wasn't as though he could tell her that he loved her. She would bolt, despite her own feelings.

"You ran," he said, hoping that once he began, the words would come out right. "From Lita's apartment. It felt like you were starting to avoid me again. I needed to make sure you wouldn't. That's why I came."

There was a line, lingering in the air, that he knew he should say. _I can't lose you as a friend._ But he couldn't bring himself to say that was all he wanted her as. Not again.

But it didn't matter that he didn't say it. It hung in the air, and wrapped around their throats like an invisible noose, and he saw it tightening as Serena swallowed.

She smiled at him, but her smile and her voice were just a little too bright to be real. "Okay. I won't avoid you. But I'm just warning you – last night, you know – teenage girls have really hyperactive emotions!"

She laughed after this as though it was a joke. And because he was too afraid to lose her, he played along, taking the escape route that she had given him. "Everything about you is hyperactive, Odango," he said teasingly, tilting his head.

She kept smiling, but the corners of her eyes were stiff, under rigid control. It was too much. He took too much from her. Even when he was trying to keep from saying anything that would make her blame herself, he made her feel inadequate and rejected. He wanted to do something, any little thing that he could give her.

He caught her wrist.

She went still, turning her head slowly to look back up at him. She began to shake her head at him, warning. "Darien – "

He caught himself. He couldn't risk it. Not over a single selfish moment of guilt, a need to touch her. It would be idiotic.

He released his grip.

"What, do you really think I'm going to try to kiss you with your dad in the next room?" He pulled her into a one-armed hug. "Get over yourself, Odango. You may be pretty, but not enough for me to risk my life."

She laughed, and Darien felt her relax, both under his arm and in her aura. But he felt disappointment flow from her, too, a warm salty ebb like the tide, and he couldn't help but feel that despite all his reasoning, it was carrying him further away from the shore he wanted to reach.

-

The next three days were a whirlwind of invitation writing and delivering, decoration making, outfit finding, grocery shopping, recipe testing, music picking, game planning relaxation, despite the paradox that might seem. Not a single youma appeared, though Darien and Serena, both bothered by a sense of impending something – which, for Serena, was augmented by Rini's twisting and turning at night when usually the little girl had been a very stoic sleeper – kept sharp attention to their senses.

Serena and Lita, prompted by Ikuko, decided to wear kimonos to the party, and added to the party invitations that traditional dress was welcome. Mayuko, upon receiving her invitation, whisked Buji and Rini both away, to their dismay, in fit them for kimonos, and invited Ikuko over as well. She, along with several families that the Furuhatas and Tsukinos knew, Motoki's sister's friends, and their own friends from Azabu, like Molly, Melvin, and Tonami, had already said they would be coming to the Furuhatas' house for the event.

Motoki's father presided over the preparation, bellowing orders from his armchair as though he was back in the arcade. He took special delight in bossing Asanuma and Darien around, and Asanuma's grumbles only seemed to please him more. Lita's zucchini bread he ate with great zeal although he only picked at most of his other meals, and he told Motoki that he would probably be passing the arcade on to Lita instead of him. To which Asanuma retorted that it didn't make any difference, since Toki would be marrying Lita anyway, which led to a round of Motoki-teasing that had Furuhata-san roaring with laughter.

On the afternoon of New Year's Eve, Motoki shooed the rest of his family out of the house so that when they returned, the final product of the decorations and spread of food would be a surprise when they returned with the guests at seven o'clock. They went to Serena's house, where, remarked Asanuma, Ikuko and Mayuko were probably drowning Motoki's mother and sister in kimonos to try on.

"They know how to swim," said Motoki, using his wrist to push up the sweaty bandanna that Asanuma had lent him to wear while he pounded mochi.

Darien and Buji – who had begged Darien to rescue him from his mom and her manic kimono-fitting – were sent off to pick up ice to put in the cooler for the drinks. Mikai finished hanging all the crepe paper streamers and paper lanterns, and Lita took a break while she waited for the dough she had just made to rise before she put it in the oven. The two, bored, began an impromptu arm wrestling fight on the kitchen table.

The combined force exerted on the table by their two muscular elbows was so great that one of the table legs snapped off with a loud crack.

Serena and Rini, looking up from the table where they were peeling vegetables, blinked in unison. Asanuma, pasting bits of mirror and colored glass to a Styrofoam ball, groaned. Motoki, up to his elbows in mochi, laughed.

"Oops." Lita took a step back.

"I can fix that," said Mikai, also stepping back and pointing at the leaning table and the wooden leg that rolled on the floor beside it. "I swear."

"There's hammers and nails and stuff in the shed out back," said Motoki, still laughing. "Can you show him where, Numa?"

"Me?" exclaimed Asanuma, but Lita was already tying back on an apron that matched Motoki's and giving him a warning glare, so he grumbled and headed for the door. "Come on, Kentaro."

Mikai grabbed the table leg, hefting it over his shoulder like a caveman's club, and followed Asanuma downstairs into the backyard.

The shed was small and unlocked. Asanuma hadn't seen it in years, since he and Motoki got it into their heads during freshman year to build their own motorcycle out of spare parts, left over from the motorcycle Furuhata-san had owned as a college student, and then got bored with it halfway through.

The half skeleton of the motorcycle lay on its side on the dusty floor. Mikai's eyes went to it immediately.

"Oho!" he said. "Motoki didn't strike me as a motorcycle type."

Asanuma dug through the toolbox. He had no idea what he was looking for. Nails or screws? What size? "Well, it's not like you've known him for long enough to be able to tell."

He missed the small smile curving Mikai's lips. "I can usually read people pretty well just by looking at them."

"Oh, yeah?" Asanuma was not at all interested.

"Yep. A skill sharply honed by years of working in a garage." Mikai reached past Asanuma and pulled out a wrench. "Don't work with tools much, do you?"

Asanuma scowled. "Not many college-bound high schoolers do."

Mikai grinned tightly. "You've got a point there." He spun the wrench in his fingers and began to dig through the tray of old screws and nails with his fingers.

Asanuma rocked back on his haunches and felt awkwardly useless. Especially after his diatribe.

"Why don't you go see if the girls need any help?" suggested Mikai without turning around from the toolbox. "I can find the right screws."

Asanuma opened his mouth to – to – well, to say _something_ –

"Hey!" Motoki showed up behind Asanuma, grinning broadly, with his sleeves rolled up and apron gone. "You need any help, Mikai-sempai?"

"You can hold this for me, so I can match the screw to the holes," said Mikai, handing it to him. He nodded at the motorcycle. "Hey, you did this thing with the chains on the bike? It's pretty tight."

Motoki absolutely glowed with pleasure. "Thanks!" He squatted down next to Asanuma, putting the table leg across his knees.

Asanuma stood up. Motoki didn't even say anything as he walked away.

He seethed as he strode. Damn Mikai! He just waltzed in here and was suddenly Darien AND Motoki's best friend? AND he got along with Lita AND Serena AND knew how to do just EVERYTHING. Porcupine-headed otaku punk –

"Hey, Asanuma!" Lita caught sight of him as he reentered the kitchen. "Can you watch the cookies for me? I gotta go move the lawn furniture."

Asanuma looked up at the ceiling. _Are you mocking me, God?_ "I can move the furniture, Lita – "

"Nah, I'll be able to do it faster." Lita nudged past him, plopping the oven mitts onto his hands. "You want them just brown on the edges. THEN take them out." In a mutter in his ear, she added, "Serena'll tell you to leave them in a little longer. DON'T do it."

And Asanuma was left standing there in front of the oven with oven mitts on his hands as Lita whooshed outside.

He looked at leaning table. Rini and Serena were sitting there peeling and cutting the vegetables and sorting them into bowls. Rini was propped up in her chair by a stack of phone books.

"Yeah, but the problem is that the one villain who made his body look like Tamahome would have gone into Taka, too," Rini was telling Serena, who was resolutely shaking her head.

"No, no, no," the blonde said. "It was _magic_."

"It was sloppy writing!"

"Rini, sometimes you've just got to let go and let magic solve the problems," Serena preached, sweeping sliced carrots from the cutting board into a red bowl. "Or in this case, Suzaku."

Not to interrupt," said Asanuma, who had noticed something. "But should Rini really be handling that rather large and very sharp knife?"

Rini looked up from the radish she was slicing and gave him a rather tentative grin. Serena, beside her, smiled sheepishly and lifted her hand in the air. A veritable cast of band-aids encased her index finger.

Asanuma sighed, partly from Rini's lukewarm treatment of him. "Oh."

"Exactly," said Rini, and continued chopping.

Serena placed the sliced radish in a purple bowl and studied Asanuma. "You didn't like working outside, Numa?"

Asanuma scratched the back of his neck and turned to peer in the oven at the rolls. Still all white. "Nah…I'm not really a fix-it sort of guy."

"Me neither," confided Serena.

Beside her, Rini snorted. "I hope you're not a guy."

Serena bopped her on the head.

"Hey, I'm holding a knife!"

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a promise!" Rini glowered, but it was a glower of adoration, Asanuma could tell from the little upward curve at the end of her frowning lips. He felt a little jealous. He'd thought he'd made so much progress with Rini, and now she was acting distant again and barely letting Serena out of her sight…

He shook his head. God, was he moody today or what? He turned to the oven so he could take out the rolls, finish the New Year's ball, and go for a walk, clear his head.

"Oh, no, don't take them out yet!" exclaimed Serena. "Give them just a little bit longer."

Asanuma grinned a little despite himself. "Sorry, no can do," he said, setting the rolls on the stovetop and turning off the oven.

"Hmph." Serena crossed her arms. "Lita told you not to listen to me."

"Yup." Asanuma tossed her a grin and returned to his project in the corner. He was gluing bits of mirror and glass to a Styrofoam ball to make their very own New Year's Ball that they could drop at midnight.

He had set out a bunch of newspaper beneath the ball so that he wouldn't drip super-flue onto Motoki's carpet. He sat down in front of it now and sighed, rubbing his forehead.

Then his eye was caught by a word in one of the news blurbs in the side column on one of the newspaper pages: _youma._

Sweeping the glass pieces out of the way, he leaned close to read the small print.

_**Body Found in Tokyo Bay**_

_Fisherman found a set of remains in Tokyo Bay on December 30. The remains were badly burned and decomposing, but the Minato Ward coroner has said that the remains may belong to a youma. Officials have not said why they suspect these are youma remains, but they are asking anyone with information to come forward._

"We're back!"

Asanuma's head snapped up. A blast of cold air from the opening door hit him in the face. He blinked as Buji tramped inside, Darien behind him.

"Am I the only one who thinks having ice at a New Year's party doesn't make a lot of sense?" said Darien, holding his arms out to keep the bags of ice away from his body.

"Hahahaha!" Asanuma laughed heartily, crumpling the newspaper in front of him and jumping to his feet. "You're right! I wonder why we didn't think of that before!"

Buji, unwinding his scarf, looked at him. "What's wrong with you?"

"Actually, my mom just called and yelled at me. I forgot to shovel the driveway. I've gotta go do that real quick, but I'll be right back." Giving Darien a grin to offset any suspicion, Asanuma darted past them for the stairs.

His mind worked furiously as he jogged to his car, the ball of newspaper in his pocket. There were only three people he knew of who could half-burn a youma body: himself, Darien, and Rei.

Well, there was Mikai with his blowtorch, too, so it _could_ have been a civilian. That would explain why there was still a body, instead of just a pile of ashes.

He reversed out of the driveway and accelerated down the street, tires slipping on the icy pavement.

The streets were already beginning to clog with holiday traffic, and half of the streets were blocked off for festivals, even though the temperature outside was atrociously cold. He soon found himself stuck in traffic, leaving him to sink into more fevered thoughts.

He had been sure, ninety-nine percent sure, that the girl in the photo with Senator Hino wasn't Rei. But the article about the youma remains had said that the remains had found in Tokyo Bay. The Arakawa River flowed into the bay, and one of its tributaries flowed through the Bancho area in Chiyoda Ward – the area where Senator Hino's house was.

Surely that wasn't a coincidence? Surely a civilian wouldn't kill a youma and dump its remains into a river instead of showing people to enjoy fifteen minutes of fame.

But surely Rei wouldn't have dumped the remains into the river, either. She wouldn't have needed to. She could dust youma completely.

Unless her powers had been weakened?

Or someone had caught her and stopped her from dusting it entirely?

The thought drove into him like a nail into a coffin. He turned out of the New Year's traffic the first chance he got and parked in the first space he found. Then he got out and took off for the train station.

He was going to Chiyoda.

-

"How did Asanuma get here in his car if his driveway was snowed in?" asked Buji as he followed Darien into the kitchen.

"Maybe he was parked in the road," said Darien, but he was wondering the same thing. Asanuma's tension had sprang out at him like a snapped rubber band when they entered the room a few minutes ago. There were only a few things he could think of that would make Asanuma react like that. None of them were things he could discuss with Buji. "Here, help me put the ice in the cooler."

"You're back!" Serena greeted them from the table.

Darien glanced at the leaning table with its missing leg, at the knife in Rini's hand, and the bandages on Serena's fingers. "Did we miss something?"

"A clash of the titans," said Rini.

"Lita and Mikai were arm-wrestling," interpreted Serena.

"Ah. And that injured your finger how?"

Rini shook her head. "That was self-inflicted."

Serena grinned at them both. "Buji, hand me one of the cookies from the counter, please?"  
Buji crossed his arms. "Aren't those for the party?"

"Someone has to make sure they taste good!" said Serena defensively.

Darien snorted and handed her one. She flashed him a grin. "I officially like you better than these two. Rini wouldn't let me have one, either."

"Hey, guess what else is going to be self-inflicted?" said Rini. Serena turned a curious look to her over the cookie in her mouth. "That muffin-top around your middle if you keep eating all those cookies."

Serena made another indignant sound, swallowing. "I don't have a muffin-top!"

"Yet," said Buji, Rini, and Darien in unison.

-

It was one thing to _plan_ to barge into a senator's house. It was quite another to actually do it. He went back and forth in his mind trying to decide whether to get into the house as Itto Asanuma, Japan's American ambassador's son, or as the yet unnamed Fire Shittenou. He knew that even his parents' status would probably do little to make Hino tell him anything, even if it granted him an audience with the man. He would probably have to fall back on his Shittenou powers to get any information anyway, and he'd rather not do both, as it might compromise his identity…

The question ended up being a moot one anyway, as he did not arrive in Bancho, the plush neighborhood that housed many ambassadors and Japanese government officials until dusk was falling, too late to get an audience with Hino as Itto Asanuma. Fire Shittenou it was, then.

Asanuma parked his car parked at the D-Land Embassy, which hadn't been used since the D-Land Ball months and months ago and which, he knew, was currently only inhabited by two servants. Neither of whom were here today, because it was New Year's.

He transformed and crept back to Hino's residence, which was monstrously large even by Bancho standards. His armor and red tunic weren't the warmest thing in the winter air, and he was sweating nervously – not so much at the prospect of confronting Hino as by the prospect of seeing Rei again. Of talking to her. Of telling her how he felt.

If she _was_ with her father, willingly or not, she probably wasn't in the best possible mood, or even in the best mental state. But finding out that someone liked you couldn't possibly do any harm, could it? Unless you were Serena and Darien, of course, but those two were the victims of freakishly cruel coincidence. Asanuma didn't see how it could possibly do anything now but help Rei's mental state to find out that he liked her.

At Rei's grandfather's grave a week ago, he'd understood why he had to wait. But now, even though he could see the reason in what he'd thought about Rei needing to love herself before she would accept that anyone else could love her, he couldn't imagine himself finally seeing her again and _not_ telling her how he felt. Not after he'd been trapped in that Sister's ice and realized that he might actually die before he ever saw Rei again, might die before he actually got to tell her he loved her.

He felt as though he had been putting his whole life on hold, waiting for the day when he would finally find Rei and tell her how he felt. If he didn't do that before he died, his life would have been fairly pointless.

As Asanuma reached the fence surrounding Hino's mansion, he drew himself out of this introspection. A surprise met him when he managed, after two tries, to jump the fence, and reached the building.

Half of the mansion's top floor was burned away, a mass of blackened masonry and furniture, open to the air.

Asanuma's mouth went very dry. He had envisioned playing the hero, charging in and freeing Rei from her father. Of course, he had known his imagination was highly unrealistic: Rei would certainly find a way to keep such a stereotyped Disney story-type scenario from taking place. She wasn't the type to sit back quietly and be carried off into a sunset.

But if he had ever envisioned her escaping her father on her own, it had been by normal, civilian means like running away.

Not by using her Senshi powers.

Perhaps she had lost control. Perhaps her father's mind games had driven her so close to the edge that she hadn't been able to help herself.

And if Hino had realized what she was – Asanuma's mouth went even drier, the sour taste of bile plunging into it – what would he have done by turn her over to the government whose patronage he so craved? Certainly that could be one of the reasons that he had not heard about the damage to Hino's home. Some time must have passed since the damage had been made; repairs were already beginning to be made, metal struts set up. How else but through a government cover-up would this sort of damage to a prominent senator's home not made the news?

A beam of light bounced suddenly across Asanuma's eyes. Only then did he realize that dusk had fallen. "Hey! You!"

Asanuma sprang into motion, racing toward the wrecked mansion. His questions could only be answered by Hino or Rei, and the only place he knew to find either of them was inside the house.

Closer now, past the pool cage and towering, decorative topiaries, he could see that a window on the second floor had light coming from behind the closed blinds. Two other lights were on, but they were downstairs. A bedroom where he could find Hino or Rei was more likely to be upstairs, he thought.

He summoned fire to his fingertips, blowing on them to make the fire heat up faster and spread across his hands. Then he concentrated to spread it up his body, to cover all the parts of him not shielded by armor, including his head and face. If he was going to be breaking through glass windows, he wanted to have some protection against the shards, especially since Darien and his Golden Crystal were at least two and a half hours away. Asanuma in Shittenou form healed faster than he once had, but still nowhere near fast enough to stay alive if he got one of his arteries sliced open.

For some reason that he had yet to discover, the fire did not affect his tunic, and he was grateful. He would not have liked to confess to Rei in nothing but armor and a tunic of chain mail nearly as short as her Senshi skirt if – no, _when_ – he found her. Darien was definitely going to chew him out, since any security cameras that caught Asanuma on tape would see a human-shaped fireball, and THAT would certainly make the news, but there was nothing for it.

Asanuma took a deep breath, already feeling the difficulty of maintaining a full-body fire shield. Sweat beaded on his forehead and sizzled away as though angrily scolding him.

He jumped.

His angle was off. He'd be able to punch the window but not to grab on.

Asanuma let himself land, then sprang back up again, at a larger angle this time. One fire-gloved fist crashed through the glass. The other seized the window sill. He punched the glass again, opening a hole big enough for him to climb through. Then he grabbed the broken glass and wriggled through it. The charcoal-coppery smell of his blood sizzling away in the fire shield was strong in his nostrils.

He crashed to the floor. Not the most stylish landing, but he'd give himself an 8 for effort. He looked up –

And met Senator Hino's narrowed eyes.

-

She had been running for days through the time plane.

Mercury was not a religious being, but if she had been, she would have thanked whatever being had created Chronos' time plane that it was the one place within which Pluto could not teleport. If Pluto had been able to teleport, she would have caught Mercury nearly as soon as she fled from her at Michiru and Haruka's house nearly a week ago.

Thirst was finally beginning to conquer her. Usually she could draw moisture from the air, absorb it, but the time plane was a barren, hostile wasteland. The gray fog that stretched across its expanse was not made of water but of aura, and Mercury could draw no sustenance from it.

She was Senshi, though, and so she pushed her thirst away and did not let her pace falter. She knew from the forbidden documents that she had secretly read in Queen Selenity's library a thousand years ago that she was getting close to the place she sought. In the distance, red light flashed through the fog, a sign that she was getting close.

Pluto was getting closer, too, though, Mercury's visor told her. It had taken the Time Senshi three days to finally track Mercury's trail through the aura-dampening fog, but once she found it, she must have realized Mercury's destination. At that point, she needed no longer painstakingly follow Mercury's trail but only, rather, follow the path to the heart of the time plane. She was moving quickly, unhampered by Mercury's thirst or unfamiliarity with the rocky, fog-shrouded terrain.

When she first began to work covertly around and against Pluto's plans, Mercury had been certain that the Time Senshi would not kill her if she ever found out. Pluto was rabidly loyal to the princess, yes, but she was also rabidly loyal to tradition, and she would not kill Mercury, a flash-form. At most, she might submerge her beneath Ami again and imprison them both until she needed them enough to release them again.

But since then, Mercury's computer had recorded sizeable spikes in Pluto's mind waves. Initially she had put them down to Pluto's immersion in time. But after observing Pluto's interaction with the Outer Senshi and now, running from her, Mercury was rather more convinced that the fluctuations were signs of mental instability. Pluto had watched the fall of their kingdom and murder of her princess and the Senshi, and lived through a thousand years of solitude after that. Insanity in such a case would not be unexpected, and Pluto had not, after all, been reincarnated. She had no flash-form to step in if insanity did take over her mind.

So perhaps Pluto would kill her. Mercury's computer calculated the probability and flashed the result at her: _93.834% probable_.

If Pluto killed her, Ami died, too. _Do you hear that?_ sent Mercury down to the depths into which Ami had retreated since Pluto had attempted to yank her out in front of the Outer Senshi. _If that happens, Serena will die._

But there was no response, only Mercury's own adrenaline-amplified heartbeat as she pounded through the fog.

She stumbled as soundless waves of thunder began to rock her feet beneath her, compressing the air, confusing her inner ear and her balance. Gritting her teeth, she stumbled on, heartened at least by the fact that this soundless thunder meant that she was very, very close to her destination.

The time plane, from what Mercury had read in that forbidden corner of Queen Selenity's library, was like an inverted hurricane. In a hurricane, a raging roil of chaos surrounded a single center of calm. In the time plane, a single heart of chaos was surrounded by a sprawling expanse of calm.

This heart was a pit of sand the same color as the gray fog and stabbed by garnet-red lightning. When the lightning hit the sand, it superheated it into shards of glass, tiny time-mirrors that reflected scenes too small to interpret or even to discern: single eyes blinking or not blinked, rolled back and still; a few words on a page; a row of teeth; flashes of skin, of cloth, of blood, of green grass or black cloud.

Mercury knew only that these glass fragments were time mirrors. She did not know what would happen if she, an intruder in the time plane, stepped on one: if she would be frozen or sucked into the shard's time.

Hence, when she reached the sand, scrambling down to it from the rocks, she picked her way across it, careful not to step on any.

It was the painstaking slowness with which she did this that allowed Pluto to catch up with her. A triumphant shriek came from behind her, echoing in the silence. Mercury, instead of spinning, began to run, no longer troubling to avoid the shards, feeling them crack and grind beneath her heels.

She heard Pluto's boots pounding after her. She darted between forks of lightning; they were more frequent and closer together here. In the bloody light splashed up by the lightning, she saw a tremendous metal trapdoor, half-buried in the gray sand.

Her pulse leapt. _This_ was what she sought.

A rim of time glass, fragmented like geode crystal and probably created by the lightning, encircled the door. Mercury, heart so cold and tight with anticipation that it felt like an ice crystal in her chest, screamed out as she ducked, falling onto the glass, out of the way of a sudden spear of lightning that hissed into the sand. Its proximity yanked the hair on her head and arms up in a suction of static pull.

Mercury could have ignored this, and she even ignored the images flashing beneath her in the time glass, a maelstrom of colors and faces, so many of them familiar. But in the strobe-like flash of the lightning, she watched her arms shrivel, the flesh molder away from them, leaving only glacine skeleton behind.

In Mercury's split second of horrified distraction, Pluto caught up to her and swung her staff.

The hard metal caught Mercury under the ribs and sent her flying. Pluto darted after her. As Mercury slammed into an outcropping, her body jolting forward from the force of the collision, Pluto caught her again with a backhanded swing of the staff, driving her into the ground. Sand sprayed up along her path as she shot backward through the sand, time shards raking down her back like claws until another rock outcropping finally arrested her motion.

Pluto appeared then in front of her, staff digging into her chest, grinding against her ribs. Mercury coughed up a wad of saliva, choked, and spat a sharp icicle at Pluto's face.

The Time Senshi flinched back; she had never been drilled as intensely in the ways of combat like the other Senshi, allowed instead to depend on her powers of time-manipulation, and so she flinched backward, stepping back, instead of merely leaning her head momentarily away and keeping her weapon on her opponent. Mercury snatched the opportunity, sprang into a crouch, and jammed ice-coated hands – that she was shocked and relieved to see, were not the bones she had watched them decay into; it must only have been an illusion created by the time-lightning – into the back of Pluto's knees.

Pluto toppled like a sack of rocks. Mercury spun and darted for the trapdoor again. She froze the blood that streamed from the cuts on her back and willed it into ice shards that hurtled at great speed toward Pluto. Hopefully they could hold the Time Senshi back long enough for Mercury to get into the chamber beneath the trapdoor.

Her adrenaline-trembling hands found the door handle and heaved up.

The give that she expected did not come. Her shoulder wrenched like a torn-open scream. Blinking back sweat and blood from a forehead injury she had not realized she had, Mercury stared disbelievingly down at the metal. A dark hole began to grow beside the handle.

As she watched, it resolved into a giant keyhole – then she spun, hearing Pluto approaching behind her.

Red blood stood out from a cut on the Senshi's dark face beneath her tiara – Mercury's icicle must have hit her despite her attempt to dodge – but she was laughing.

"Finally something you do not know, Mercury?" she taunted, leaning on her staff.

Mercury's eyes followed the grip of Pluto's fingers on her staff to the bottom of the staff, where it was shaped like a key.

She lunged.

Pluto swung.

Mercury reversed her momentum at the last moment, leaping and yanking her knees to her chest. The staff swung under her – Mercury shoved her feet down. They landed on the staff. Pluto stumbled, then lost hold of the staff. Mercury hooked a foot under it and kicked it into her own grasp, then shot for the door.

She stabbed the staff into the keyhole, heard a click, and yanked the door open, darting down into the darkness.

There it was.

Glowing on a pedestal to her right, the third talisman, the garnet orb. If she stole it and kept it from Pluto's grasp, Sailor Saturn could never be awakened.

Mercury rushed to it and grabbed it.

But as its cold weight touched her gloves, her eyes – flicking around the chamber with the curiosity that killed the cat, looking for the other thing that she had read lay in this sacred chamber – landed on the only other thing in the chamber.

Her breath would have left her lungs even if Pluto hadn't charged into the chamber and slammed her staff into Mercury's stomach.

"Pluto," she gasped, crashing to her knees, then her elbows. Her fingers were centimeters from the water that had leaked from the fountain in the middle of the room to form a puddle on the flagstones. "What have you done?"

-

It really wasn't fair that someone could be sitting in their bed in pajamas but still look so dangerous, Asanuma thought as he met Hino's glare. The man was looking at him as though he was as contemptuous as harmless as a cockroach, for all that he could see himself reflected as a giant figure of flame in the man's eyes.

The man said something. Asanuma frowned, realizing how hard it was to hear over the crackling of flame across his body. He took a step closer.

"That's right," said Hino. The room was dead silent but for the crackling whisper of the flames across Asanuma's body. "Come closer, Rei. I knew you'd be back. You have more of me in you than you do of Hiotsukeru. That's why her father couldn't stand you."

Asanuma saw red. The flames around his body shot up as though fed by a gusty wind, their roar mixing with his voice. "_You effing bastard! You say this stuff to Rei?_" Crystal shoved from his skin, into his hand, heavy and sharp with the need to kill.

"Ah ah ah!" Hino bolted out of his lounging position. The pillow in his lap toppled to the floor.

Revealing a shotgun in his hand.

The crystal in Asanuma's hand clattered to the hardwood floor.

"That's right," whispered Hino. "I'm ready for you this time."

The fiery haze in front of Asanuma's vision was receding quickly, as were the flames from his body, back into his pores. It left him undefended from the gun, but he felt too sick to feel afraid. Hino was willing to kill him. Hino thought he was Rei. Hino was willing to kill Rei.

He was willing to kill his own daughter. And he was smirking triumphantly as though he was happy about it.

Asanuma had thought that he knew the extent of Rei and her father's relationship. He had thought that he knew all the dozens of facets of manipulation and blackmailing and cruelty. But the kaleidoscope had just shifted to show him that there was a whole new field of twistedness of which he hadn't even had an inkling.

The cool air of the room touched his skin. He saw Hino's face freeze and knew that the fire had retreated completely back into him.

Hino stared.

"Yeah," said Asanuma. His voice was shaking. "I'm not Rei."

Before he himself was even aware of it, he had his hand and a razor-sharp crystal at Hino's temple.

He pressed its point into Hino's skin until a single bead of blood swelled at its tip. "Drop the fucking gun."

Hino didn't let go of it. "Wait. If you're not Rei – " Each word made his temple throb against the crystal point, squeezing free a fresh bead of blood to trickle down his face. " – I'm no threat to you."

"Wrong," said Asanuma. He pushed the crystal in deeper. It was very easy to draw blood from this man. "Drop it."

Trembling, Hino dropped it.

"Now push it off the bed."

With a swipe of his arm, Hino sent it falling to the floor. It clanked against the wooden.

Asanuma kicked it under the bed. "Obviously you've seen Rei lately When?"

"Who are you?"

"I don't see why you need to know anything more about me than that I can shoot crystals out of my hands. And make them shoot out of you, too, only it won't be your hand they'll be coming out of, if you get my drift."

"Vulgar," Hino hissed. He choked as Asanuma tightened his arm around his throat. "December 26. She showed up in the middle of the night."

"Why?"

"I don't know!" spat Hino. "She took the girl I'd hired to pretend to be her. But not until after she and another Senshi wrecked my house."

The blood thudded hard in Asanuma's ears. Another Senshi? Ami? "Which Senshi?"

"I don't know – " Hino jerked again, against Asanuma's tightening arm. His voice was a rasp. "I don't keep track of those vigilantes – "

"What did she look like?" Asanuma yanked him still and dug the crystal point back into his temple. He was less careful this time. He could still remember how Serena had knelt before Mikai, so desperate to find Ami.

"Short hair! She had short hair! Stop it, for God's sake – I didn't see anything else! It was dark! Stop!"

Asanuma didn't stop. "Who was the girl you hired? Why did Rei take her?" he demanded.

"Tomoe. Tomoe Hotaru! I don't know why my idiot daughter took her away. Maybe she was jealous that she'd been replaced! Let GO!"

He had heard the name Tomoe before, he knew he had. But there was something blaring at the edges of his hearing – police sirens. "Shit."

He yanked Hino's head back with fresh force. "Where did Rei go, when she left with the girl?"

"I don't know!" choked Hino. Water was streaming from his flashing eyes. "She knocked me unconscious!"

"You're lucky she didn't do more," said Asanuma. "I will, if I ever see you again."

He slammed Hino's head against the bedpost, gave his limp body a kick in the gut for good measure, and leapt back out the window just as two wailing police cars screeched to a halt in the driveway.

-

The stage was set. Rubeus had spent several days summoning youma, rationing out his energy carefully. At full strength, he could summon one every thirty hours before his energy dropped too low, but he knew that he would need as much energy as he could for the fight with Wiseman, especially if he had to hold him off while the Terran prince healed the Shittenou, he summoned only one every two days, ending up with three youma. He would have preferred to reserve his energy altogether and not summoned any youma, but he knew that the Wiseman, who was aware of all their youma summonings, would expect him to be building a youma force to distract the Senshi and capture the princess. If Rubeus did not summon any youma and somehow managed to capture the princess, the Wiseman would be suspicious of his claim, for he knew, as did all of the Black Moon, that Rubeus was most skilled at brute force, but even his brute force would do little against the Terran prince, even the weaker prince of the past.

He had left the youma in a small void attached to the main one, as though gathering them for a mass attack. He intended to release them into deserted areas of Tokyo – where they could do no harm, an isolated sewer system, an abandoned plant, etc., but where the Wiseman would be able to sense that they had been released into Tokyo and assume that they had been used to distract the Senshi – once he had arrived at the location he chosen for the face-off.

But just as he teleported into the location he had selected for the face-off, a place that both he and the princess knew from the future, for he had chased her there once, he felt the six youma presences pop into existence throughout the city.

Emerald appeared suddenly in front of him, laughing. "Do you like my surprise, dear Rubeus?"

Rubeus' heart stuttered. He snatched his hand from out of his vest and the ruby inside it. His heart pounded hard against the gemstone. "What did you do, Emerald?"

"I noticed that you'd set aside a little stockpile of youma," said the green-haired woman. "I thought I'd do you a favor and set them loose in all the places the little Terrans have gathered for their pitiful New Year's parties."

She smiled and whipped out her fan, laughing behind it. "I contributed two of my own youma to the cause, by the way. I thought you probably needed as much help as you could to keep your job – and your head!" She laughed high, piercing. "Happy New Year's!"

Emerald vanished in a flash of neon green light.

For a full minute, Rubeus did not move, not trusting her not to teleport back and catch him in the middle of his treason, which was doubtless what she had intended to do.

"Idiot," he muttered angrily. She had sensed that he must be up to something strange, but if she had realized that it was to save the prince with whom she claimed to be so enamored, he doubted she would have interfered. But she was too blinded with her desire to elevate herself in the prince's eyes to read between the lines! "Idiot!"

He had to move quickly now. The Wiseman would think that the youma had been released as part of Rubeus' plan, and he would expect him to send word that he had captured the princess very soon. Three youma, and Emerald had added three more – that made six youma. There were two Senshi and three Shittenou, which left a youma still for the prince to fight if they split up – which would delay him in following the princess.

But if he sensed one of his Shittenou in trouble, he would spare no time to come for him, Rubeus was certain. He would delegate the youma to one of his Shittenou or the Senshi and come immediately to save his subordinate, the same way that Prince Diamond would come if he knew Rubeus to be in trouble.

Rubeus hunched his shoulders, steeling his mind against the uncertainties assailing him, and pulled out the phoenix-blood ruby to release the Shittenou.

-

Thirty years in the future, kimonos were about as rare as people with black or brown hair. Rini, shuffling around in her sandals and the kimono Buji's mother had given to Ikuko for her, rather thought that it was not such a bad thing they had gone extinct. She might as well have manacles locked around her ankles for all the range of movement she had in the restricting outfit. She could only take one tiny step at a time.

And now it needed readjusting _again_? Mayuko-san was beckoning her over for the third time that night, which meant something had come untied for the third time in half an hour. Rini swallowed a scowl and shuffled across the room toward her.

But when she reached the couch where Buji's very pregnant mom sat, Mayuko didn't reach to adjust anything at all. She gestured at someone standing beside her instead. "Look, Rini-chan! What do you think?"

Rini gave Buji, who was standing there scowling in a navy blue outfit much like her own, an unimpressed look before remembering that his mother was there.

"Um," she said then, "It looks really nice." A thought hit her, and she twirled. "Not as pretty as mine, though! Thank you so much, Mayuko-san!" And she leaned over to give Mayuko-san a kiss on the cheek.

"Oh!" Mayuko beamed. "You're such a sweetheart!"

Rini shot the scowling Buji a smirk – then went still.

That aura.

Shot through with the taste of ozone like the blue light in the middle of a candle flame, it wavered into her awareness. It sputtered weakly, reaching for her.

Rini spun and sprinted for the door.

Not a meter from where she had started, she crashed to the floor, hindered by the ridiculous wooden sandals. She yanked them off, hiking the ridiculous kimono up to her knees, and shoved through the people crowding the room, toward the door.

Already she sensed Serena's awareness snapping toward her, and she sprinted down the icy steps, seizing the banister to keep herself from falling. There was someone else following her, though, too –

"Rini! Where are you going?"

_Buji. _Rini growled.

"Go away!" she yelled into the thin night air. Already her two-toed socks were soaked through from the slush on the street. Her feet were prickling fiercely, soon to be numb.

"Rini!" There was Serena's voice now, further away. Panic pushed Rini's pulse into her mouth. From what she could sense of her Asanuma's aura, he was barely alive, and the blood man was with him. If Serena came – if Serena came – _this_ could be when Serena died.

She couldn't let her come!

Her eyes flared with a burning sensation. It spread through her, enveloping her, building with her desperation, and then vanished, flying off like a torn piece of clothing.

Behind her, she felt Buji's aura fall to a stop. He had stopped following her. Relief rushed through her, and she charged on through the wintry streets, toward Asanuma's aura.

-

"Rini! Rini!" Serena shouted. "Buji!" The two children were moving fast – but then suddenly Buji's aura stopped.

She came upon him within second, a small shape in the street – with glowing golden eyes.

She stopped short. "Buji?"

He took a step toward her.

"Buji?" she said again. But time was running out, she couldn't stop here because she was frightened! She ran to him, grabbing him by the arms. "Buji!"

It was him, all right, everything but his eyes. They glowed as brightly golden as Darien's ever had when he was blind. Fear gripped her heart, and peripherally, she could feel Rini, getting further and further away. But she couldn't leave Buji like this –

"Serena!" Lita's voice and footsteps rang out behind her.

"Lita!" Serena spun. "Something's happened to Buji! Rini's running after Asanuma, he's badly hurt somewhere with someone from the Black Moon – "

Worry flashed across Lita's face. She took Buji's arm, face drawn as she saw his glowing eyes and still, slack face.

Serena spun to run after Rini.

Buji exploded in a blur of limbs.

Serena fell hard on the pavement in her kimono as his foot tripped her. She heard the fabric rip. Lita, off-balanced by Serena's flailing arms as the blonde fell, followed suit, cursing in pain.

"What the hell?" she sputtered.

Buji stood before them, eyes still glowing.

"He's stopping us from going after her," Serena breathed.

"I've got him," said Lita grimly. "You go after her, and we'll follow."

She lunged and tackled Buji to the ground. Serena heard them both cry out, but by then they were far behind her as she tore down the street with her ripped kimono flapping around her legs.

-

"I still don't think this is legal," said Darien. He eyed the fireworks in his arms.

"That hardly matters, does it?" Mikai crouched, planting one of the fireworks in the cleared space. "If we get caught, you can just wave your hand and convince the poor police officer that we have a permit."

"I hope you're joking."

"I'll let you think that I am. A discussion about power and responsibility would be a real buzz kill for a New Year's party, especially after all of Furuhata-san's delicious sake."

Darien made a sound of annoyance. "Don't tell me you're drunk."

"You know, you're lucky you fell for the Champion of Love and Justice, because I don't think any other girl would find that goody two-shoes personality of yours very attractive." Mikai belched and held a firecracker steady with one hand, reaching up with the other. "Gimme a match."

After a moment passed with nothing landing in his palm, he waggled his fingers. "Uh, Darien? I'm not getting any younger here."

Finally, he looked up. "Dar – " And saw Darien bounding up the back stairs that led to the Furuhatas' kitchen door. "What the…?"

The door flew open just as Darien reached it. Lita barreled out. She saw Darien and seized his arm, her lips racing as she said something fast. He cut her off – then jerked and went still.

For a split second that seemed much longer, he stayed like that. Then he seized Lita's shoulder and said something fast and tense. She nodded and spun back into the kitchen. Darien tore back down the stairs three at a time.

"Youma just popped up all over Tokyo," he said in a rush. "At least four, and I just sensed Asanuma. There's something wrong with Asanuma, and someone from the Black Moon is with him. Rini took off after him, and Serena's following her. Buji's unconscious inside, I didn't quite understand why."

"I've got the youma," said Mikai immediately. "Where are they?"

"Lita's getting the ones at Tanuki Hill and the shrine in Odaibatown. There's three more, one at KO University – "

"Sounds like my kind of youma."

" – and another in Akihabara," finished Darien. "I'll get the one that's in Juuban. I'm sending Motoki with you. Don't let him get killed. Do you have the naginata?"

"It's not wrapped yet," quipped Motoki tensely, but he withdrew it from his subspace pocket.

Motoki appeared at the top of the stairs and hurried down to them.

"Hey," he said, his voice was tight as his greeting smile. "Get going, Dare."

The skin around Darien's lips nearly glowed in the darkness, it was so white as he turned to leave. "Don't get yourselves killed."

"You worry about your little princesses, Darien, and leave us men to our devices." Mikai clapped Motoki on the back and shoved Darien in the back of the leg with his foot. "Move!"

Darien had a pained look, as though he was dragging a knife through his intestines, but he took off. He disappeared quickly in the shadows, as though the very air endeavored to conceal him.

Mikai turned to Motoki. "We're men, right, Toki?"

Motoki was still as faintly green as the Shittenou stone he clutched in his white-knuckled hands, but he nodded, understanding what Mikai wasn't saying aloud. "We need to split up."

"We need to split up," Mikai confirmed. "I'll take KO, you get Akihabara. This is yours." He handed him the naginata. "The blade comes out like this. Releasing energy into it should release it, too. You should be able to channel your electricity through it. Give it a good maiden voyage. Good luck!"

With a salute, he blurred away. Motoki swallowed, cast one last look at his house, glowing with the cheery paper lanterns, and did the same.

-

Asanuma's aura brushed weakly against Rini again. It was even more acrid now, like ash, like death was a thin layer crusting gradually over it. She wasn't moving fast enough, she wouldn't be able to get to him in time!

Her eyes burned, and her breath knotted in her lungs. She wished, more than she ever had before, that she could transform into an animal. Something that could break into a run so fast that she would blur, that would have claws so sharp that she could tear into the blood man's chest, have jaws so powerful that she could crush his skull.

And a mind so primitive that she wouldn't be able to feel this shaking, tremoring terror, like hands pulling her ribcage apart, that Asanuma was dead.

Suddenly she was moving faster. Suddenly there was a circular, shrugging movement in her shoulders, suddenly there was wind rushing past her face colder, faster than before.

She looked down and saw the sidewalk's concrete close to her face. It rushed by beneath her as quickly as it if was a moving sidewalk. Brown blurs darted in and out of the bottom of her field of vision, and it took her a moment to realize that they were her own hands.

Her own paws.

The realization that she had transformed – she had finally transformed – did not shock her as much as it should have. It was, instead, swallowed, almost buried beneath sand. Only a bit of shock peeked out, barely enough to keep her aware that she was still Rini and not just something with four legs that could run and tear with rippling muscles and glistening teeth.

She would kill the blood man.

-

Rini was a clearer aura in Serena's perception than almost anyone else had ever been, and she could sense her at a further distance than she could sense any of the others.

But the little girl was moving so fast now that she was approaching that distance. Serena panted and wished that she could transform like Darien into some sort of creature that would make her faster so that she could catch up.

Racing down the streets as some sort of animal would probably clear the streets faster for her, too, for right now they were clogged with people celebrating the New Year, laughing and shuffling around in kimonos and thick coats as they waited for the fireworks. Serena struggled her way through them, elbowing and sometimes half-crawling her way through, for she had not thought to transform when she started chasing Rini, and there was no hidden spot now to do so.

Suddenly a roar and shrieks rang through the noise of the crowd in front of her.

There was a sudden heave and shove backwards as people tried to move back. Serena nearly lost her footing. More shrieking filled the air, and after a minute, a clearer path opened up in front of her as people began to filter back into the side roads, into houses and shops and out of the street. Serena shoved her legs forward harder as she heard gasps about "Some big cat!" "A panther!" "A lion!"

Darien was still nearly half a ward away, she had sensed his thrashing, conflicted presence transforming into Tuxedo Mask only a few seconds ago. Rini, then, must be the one they were talking about, she must have transformed?

Serena's mind and heart pounded faster, and she latched onto Rini's now-howling aura in her mind's eye. She barely focused on the road in front of her. She did not even notice how familiar the roads she was taking were until she veered sharply to the right to follow Rini and crashed into metal bars.

Falling hard, palms scraping on the sidewalk, she snapped her head up to see her school's gate in front of her. It was locked shut. But Rini's fast-moving aura and the other two – the aura that belonged to someone from the Black Moon and was even stronger than the Four Sisters, and the aura that Rini had followed that was so familiar but too strange and too nearly dead to be who she was afraid it was, please, God – pulsed inside the school gates, only about a hundred meters away.

Serena shot looks to either end of the street, but it had emptied, all the people scared away by the giant cat.

She transformed and vaulted over the gate, landing in a sloppy crouch on the other side, landing too heavily on one leg. Ignoring the jolt of pain, Sailor Moon dashed toward the cafeteria, the only building on the dark campus with windows that were lit.

She slid her new sword from her subspace pocket as she ran, reaching with her other hand to brush the rope. Mask was coming; he pounded with speed, tense and powerful like a muscle against her fingertips, worry and warning sour like bile in his sense. He was afraid of the same thing that she was: the familiarity of that weak aura.

The cafeteria's double doors were rapidly approaching. Moon changed directions, darting right, and swiped her sword in an arc, toward one of the wide windows on the east wall of the cafeteria instead. Silver light shot out in a crescent-shaped arc and sliced through the glass and concrete, shattering it.

Moon launched herself through the hole she had made.

-

Rubeus felt the young princess's aura, spitting and howling like a fierce storm in his sense as it bore down upon the school building. He pulled the crystal earring from his earlobe and, with a deep breath, crushed it beneath his boot heel.

A wisp of black energy rose from it and then blurred out of sight, carrying a message to the Wiseman that Rubeus had the princess.

Barely a second later, the double doors crashed open, and a brown mass of fur and flashing teeth exploded through them.

The beast was on Rubeus in a second. His shoulders slammed into the linoleum floor, the creature's teeth snapping millimeters from his eyes.

It was the princess, he could sense from her aura, hot with bloodlust. He heaved at her, but shock and terror had sucked the strength from his muscles. Had the plan not worked? Yes, this was the princess on top of him, and yes, there was an aura only a hundred meters away, approaching them. But it belonged to a Senshi, not to the Shittenou's prince.

It was all over, then, if the prince had sent a Senshi after the princess instead of coming himself. No Senshi could defeat the Wiseman on her own, and Itto would be dead in minutes without the prince to heal him.

The princess-beast raked her claws across Rubeus' arm where he held her fangs away from his head. Rubeus watched his arm collapse uselessly, a mess of blood and torn flesh, and gave up on trying to keep her from killing him.

-

The blood man's arm had torn open so easily. It made more hot saliva rush to her mouth. She would tear him apart so he could never make Asanuma bleed ever again –

Then there were hands, hot burning hands on her back, sizzling her fur, yanking her backward.

She whirled, roaring and spitting. She swiped her claws –

Right across Asanuma's chest.

Her eyes, wide, stared into his. In a rush like ice water poured over her head, she felt her body freeze and begin to shrink, contracting into her human body.

The slashes that she'd made across his chest, right through his mesh armor, were barely bleeding. Too much blood already crusted the chain-links, his nose, his mouth. Even without the sharp nose that had belonged to her a minute ago, she could smell the stench of decaying flesh that clung to him. His skin was faintly dark where she could see it through gaping rips in his crimson tunic. His fingers, where the pale blue fire that showed he was using his life-force to summon it, were charred black.

He had no more energy to heal himself.

He was gasping something at her. Only one of his eyes focused on her; the other was cloudy and red-spangled and didn't move at all. She didn't hear a thing he said, trapped in a deaf nightmare as she stared at her Asanuma, her Asanuma who had raised her and saved her and was burning his own body away to stay alive for her.

The blood man seized Asanuma by the arms.

Rini screamed. Sound returned suddenly to her; she heard herself, that piercing, unending, furious shriek. The blood man was holding a bloody stone against Asanuma, she felt it trying to suck him in, trying to swallow him. She screamed again and clawed at it, but then arms seized her from behind –

A split second later, the arms went weak, then tightened again as a tremendous thunderclap shook the air.

"_Little princess_," whispered the Wiseman's booming voice into Rini's mind, a hot gush in her skull like someone taunting her by blowing in her ear. She cringed against it, doubling over, folding against the arms that held her. "_I have you now_."

"No," Rini whispered. Her hands gnashed into her ears as though she could shut out the Wiseman's presence, but her eyes, wide and streaming, wouldn't close. Her body shook. "_NO_!"

Sailor Moon crushed Rini closer in her arms. An invisible force was prying at her, pulling her toward the humungous black entity in the rippling cloak that had appeared in the cafeteria nearly as soon as she had crashed through the window.

Moon dug her boots into the floor, bracing her legs, but she felt the force begin to drag her toward it, heels squealing against the linoleum. She dared not let go of Rini for long enough to find the rope.

Instead she gritted her teeth and focused her energy to her tiara, shooting beams of silver energy from its jewel toward the black creature, but they bounced away before getting within even a meter of him. Moon could just make out a nearly invisible, spherical barrier surrounding him, like a larger version of the crystal ball hovering in his clawed hands.

A laugh emanated from the thing, resonating painfully in her very bones. She gave way a step to the invisible force from the shock of it, before she recovered.

"_There will be time enough for you later, Moon. Allow me to deal with my subordinate first_."

Its glowing eyes, the only thing visible beneath its black cowl, turned toward the red-haired man near the battered Asanuma. "_So you thought to hide this Shittenou from me, Rubeus? In your phoenix-blood ruby, no less…you are more clever than I gave you credit for. I will allow you to die with your new comrade instead of alone_." He raised his arms. Power began to swirl in his palms.

Moon summoned every ounce of power she could to her tiara, muscles trembling with the effort of keeping herself and Rini from tumbling into the grip of the invisible pull. If she could release her a Twilight Flash at exactly the right time, maybe she could deflect the power from hitting Asanuma, who was still trying to move on the floor.

Crackling, multicolored energy roared to life like tornados in the hooded man's hands.

And exploded outward.

Rini screamed. "_Asanuma_!"

-

"You don't understand." Pluto's staff trembled in her hands. "I did not know then what would happen. I could not."

"You're the Senshi of Time," Mercury forced herself up from the stone floor, away from the puddle. Away from that dangerous, blasphemous puddle. "You could have looked ahead!"

"Impossible." Pluto's voice was bitter. "How do you foresee a totally separate stream of time? It branches off from our own time at a single point. One event, one thought, among trillions of others."

"That's why Pluto Senshi have minimal interaction with the outside world! That's why Chronos left laws, Pluto!" Even Mikai had never infuriated Mercury so; she was shouting. "You are to stay in the time plane and not interfere!"

"Easy for you to say!" Pluto spat. "You Inner Senshi, laughing with our princesses, playing in the outside world and doing as you wish, traveling where you want, loving whom you want! I loved my queen as well as any of you ever loved Serenity! But I was useless to her for centuries while the Silver Millennium basked in peace! I did nothing but wander this wasteland alone and watch the horrors that would come to my queen through a daughter so powerful that even she would fear her! Can you fault me for trying to help the queen I loved when she bore that daughter?"

"Yes!" spat Mercury back. "That is why Pluto alone of all the Senshi live for millennia and serve multiple queens! So that you will serve their kingdom and their people, not them! That is how the agreement was made with Chronos!"

"Again!" Pluto's eyes flashed red. "Easy to say! Not to live! You know nothing of time, Mercury! You know NOTHING of the debt I have spent centuries repaying! But I will repay it. You will not stop me."

She leveled her staff above Mercury's head. "I hope that when you are reborn this time, you will understand why this has to be done."

The staff's silver tip began to glow with blood-red energy.

Mercury closed her eyes.

-

Scarcely had the shriek ripped out of Rini's mouth than a blinding wall of gold energy burst up in front of them.

It filled the cafeteria. Asanuma was on this side of it, barely visible. A small, huddled black shadow. Beside him, the blood man was a slightly larger shadow.

Sailor Moon's arms were a vise around her. She spun, and Rini saw him.

He looked just the way that she had thought, so many times in the future, that he would. Eyes burning like gold flames, hair and cape whipping with the rage of his aura as he stalked like a predator through the overturned cafeteria tables, the very air around him hissing.

Coming to save them.

_This_ was how she had always wanted to imagine her father.

"Asanuma!" she gabbled out, struggling in Moon's hold. "Darien, you have to heal Asanuma, he's almost dead – "

The ground rocked.

Rini crashed to the floor, ears ringing. Dimly, in a rush of action around her, she saw the glow from the golden wall vanish. The world around her collapsed back into darkness except for the lights that began to shoot through the room. Wiseman's multicolored power, Sailor Moon's silver beams, the blood man's crimson orbs.

"Asanuma!" Rini yelled again, though she could not sense, through the maelstrom of energy, where Darien was. "You have to heal Asanuma!"

A pair of arms seized her. Her stomach dropped; she was suddenly sailing through the air. She grabbed out, at the arms that held her, at the blood man.

"Asanuma!" she screamed in his face.

But the blood man shook his head at her. His arms crushed her, nearly suffocating her, the muscles in his arms standing out like cords. Rini shrieked and jammed her hands against his chest. White light flashed, and smoke hissed out. He cried and released her.

She flew backward. Too late, she realized that the blood man had been keeping her from being sucked in by the Wiseman's invisible pull. She flew toward it now as inexorably as into a black hole, flailing and screaming helplessly, surrounded by the flashing lights.

Then something bullet-fast and razor-sharp whistled past her. It slammed into her and drove her backward, right into a wall.

Stars exploded behind her eyes. She gasped, blinking, crying, and trying not to breathe, for it hurt so hard to breathe. There was something inside her –

"Shit." Someone was crying beneath her. She looked down and saw Asanuma, curled on his stomach, arm outstretched. It looked strangely deflated, as though the muscle inside it had melted away. Looking down at the arm-long crystal shard in her shoulder, anchoring her against the Wiseman's pull, she understood where it had come from. "Sh…it…"

She was crying, too, and not from the pain as the Wiseman's pull made her body strain against the crystal in her shoulder. Why hadn't Darien healed him yet? "Asanuma…!"

"So...rry." He was looking up at her now with that one eye. "Love…you…'kay?"

She cried harder.

He pushed himself up, to his knees. Then his feet. His body shook. He sank, slowly, back to his hands and knees. For a minute, he was still and trembling. Then he began to crawl forward, dragging himself toward the spot where Tuxedo Mask stood a few meters away from Sailor Moon, spinning the Wiseman's energy away from him with his cane-blade as Moon shot spates of silver beams from her crystal sword as she crouched behind her tiara-shield.

"Darien!" Rini screamed. "Darien! You have to heal Asanuma – Serena, he has to heal him! He's dying!"

Tiny blue flames began to glow at Asanuma's fingertips. Rini could smell that sharp tang of ozone, of life-force burning away, and her screaming for Darien grew more frantic.

"No!" came a cry from somewhere. "What are you doing? We have to kill Wiseman!"

But Asanuma lifted his arm, and all around himself and Mask roared up a wall of blue flame.

The blood man threw himself against the wall. It hissed, and he flew backward, smoke rising from his charred skin.

"_And the traitor tastes betrayal,_" came the Wiseman's taunting voice.

Multicolored light shot from his hands toward the red-haired man. Rubeus roared and wrenched himself out of the way, just barely, the floor beside him a huge smoking crater.

The Wiseman sent another burst of energy toward him. Rubeus screamed out.

Through the wall of blue fire, Rini saw Asanuma jerk, seizing Mask's cape. Mask, crouching beside him, shouted something.

The wall collapsed into air.

Asanuma, doubled over around his shredded abdomen, choked out something.

Then the flames glowing at his fingertips went out.

He slumped to the floor, fingers still locked in Mask's cape. Rini felt the tore as the last stitch holding his body and soul together ripped.

She thrashed against the crystal impaling her to the wall. Her hands tore at the air, clawed for the gauzy aura that was floating slowly away.

_"Love…you…kay?_"

She would bring him back.

_"More than anyone else in the whole world."_

She would bring him back!

Her hand brushed something. For a minute, she could swear that she held it in her fingers, his soul. Sunny and warm and laughing and Asanuma, but it was slippery. It slid between her fingers.

And spun away into oblivion.

She didn't feel the scream of rage rip from her lungs. She didn't see the white hissing at the edges of her vision, eating its way inside until it ate the whole world.

When the whole world was gone, the white exploded.

-

Ten steps into the airport terminal, Rei's knees buckled. They fell, hard, to the floor.

Her heart beat fast as though every milliliter of blood in her veins had suddenly disappeared, and it was trying to fill them up again.

_Asanuma._

She couldn't breathe.

"Rei-san?"

Her knees came up to her chest. Her heart trembled against them. He was dead.

"Rei-san? People are looking."

Rei crushed her knees to her chest. She sucked in a deep breath.

_"This means staying away from the group. From Asanuma. Can I trust you with this?"_

_"I know what Sailor Mars' responsibilities are."_

She pushed herself back to her feet. "Come on. We need to go."

Hotaru looked at her nervously and trotted along with her down the shiny tiles of the airport terminal.

They were passing the empty gate of a plane that had just departed when power crashed against Rei.

She stumbled into one of the plastic chairs. Hotaru reached for her, but Rei stumbled back upright, breathing hard.

"Come on," she said again, voice breathless and shaky. Her very lungs felt compressed by the sheer magnitude of the power buckling outward from Tokyo like a tsunami.

But Hotaru jerked, suddenly. She fell to her knees.

"What?" Rei demanded in a whisper, sinking to her knees beside her and looking around to see that no one was watching.

The girl said nothing. Then, to her hands, she whispered something. Her arms stretched and strained, they seemed to be urging something on. She spoke again, louder; this time Rei could hear it. "Almost. Almost there…"

Her face lifted, shining, eager, her eyes swirling black and violet.

And as her bangs began to lift in an invisible wind, her forehead began to glow.

-

Blood-red light seared through Mercury's eyelids. But she felt nothing tear through her throat.

She opened her eyes. For a split second, Pluto stood in front of her, staff still poised to strike, but her eyes fastened to the garnet orb in Mercury's lap.

Mercury looked down and saw that it was pulsing an angry red.

When she looked back up, Pluto was gone. She had teleported to somewhere outside the time realm.

But Mercury felt no relief. The garnet orb, one of the talismans, glowing, meant that Saturn was awakening. And if Saturn awoke, Pluto's plan to wake the princess's flash-form and give her full control of Serena's body would come to fruition.

_No!_ cried Ami inside her suddenly. _We have to _–

But then Pluto reappeared in front of her. She seized Mercury by the arm and teleported them both.

They materialized in the middle of a dark street in Tokyo.

Mercury, swaying on her feet, was knocked to her knees by the aura that suffused the area. She could barely breathe, could barely lift her head to see the white light drowning the sky.

"The – child – ?"

"None other," said Pluto. Her eyes were glowing a faint red in the darkness; she too, was crouching. She had released her grip on Mercury's arm, undoubtedly certain that Mercury would never be able to run away under the weight of the overpowering aura. "You see now the power of its rage? But she is not our current concern. Where is Saturn?"

" – no – idea," Mercury gasped out.

"The garnet glows in your hand!" Pluto shouted. "She is awakening! You, her sister Senshi, must be able to sense her!"

What Pluto said was true. Yet Mercury could not sense Saturn's aura, only Sailor Moon's and Sailor Jupiter's…which meant that somehow, Saturn _wasn't_ awakening?

The white aura in the sky pulsed like a supernova.

A thought lit in Mercury's brain. But there was no time to ponder it now – stars went supernova when they were about to die, and as soon as this aura went out, Pluto would seize her again.

Mercury struggled to her feet and flung her arm toward the west. "There!" she gasped out.

Three things happened simultaneously.

Pluto swung her head to look where Mercury had pointed.

The white aura died

And Mercury took off in the opposite direction.

Pluto swung her head back around, spotting Mercury running. Her blood-red eyes went wide. She threw out her staff to freeze Mercury's body in time.

_Let me out!_ Ami snatched at Mercury's mind.

Two things happened simultaneously then. Pluto's time-freezing attack hit the blue-haired girl just as she began to teleport.

Eyes squeezed shut, garnet orb gripped tight in her hand, the girl's body flashed, once.

Then it faded slowly from mid-air.

But not before her lips formed a name.

"_Kentaro-san!_"

-

Rei did the only thing she could think of to do.

She slapped Hotaru.

The girl's face jerked to the side from the force. Red rushed to the surface of her cheek in the shape of a handprint.

But her eyes did not stop swirling, not did her forehead stop glowing.

"So close, princess," she whispered. Was that encouragement in her voice?

Then her face seemed almost to twist in pain. "No!" The swirling in her eyes slowed, then stopped altogether. "No…"

The glowing on her forehead dimmed and vanished. Her bangs fell back down to cover her eyes.

Disappointment flew across the delicate features like a chill autumn wind.

Then Hotaru's eyes opened, and she looked at Rei with a puzzled expression. "Why are we stopped?"

"We're not," said Rei, and began to stride down the airport terminal again, the girl's cold hand tight in her own clammy one.

Her heart whirred like an out of control motor as the girl's footsteps followed hastily after hers. Fear, temptation, and guilt tapped a fast tempo in time to their clattering footsteps. Had Asanuma's death nearly just awakened Sailor Saturn?

And…if she did awaken, could she bring him back to life?

-

The shockwave from Rini's power yanked Moon up and slammed her against the wall like a tidal wave.

Dimly, she heard shouting. Then it was as though all hearing was burned from her ears; everything was a deafening silence. She could see only blinding white light even though she could feel that her eyelids were shut.

Deaf and blind, she felt herself sliding, sliding down the wall. Just as her feet touched the ground, her limp hand brushed a pulsing, familiar shape.

The rope.

Terror exploded out at her. Then a force – no, not a force, a person – slammed into her. Darien. He tackled her flat to the floor and yanked his cape over both of them.

She could feel through her arm crushed between them and through her chest against his chest that he was saying something; vibrations were traveling through his chest, and hot breath was moving in bursts against her ear where he had trapped her head under his; but she couldn't hear what it was.

His body, on top of hers, trembled and heaved like prey waiting for a predator to swoop down upon it. The ground beneath her shook, too, as though huge things were shifting in the earth beneath them, and huge things were crashing down all around them.

Mask's heart beat hard against hers, their pulses banging just milliseconds apart. The sensation was the only way she had to measure the passage of time as nothingness gaped in her eyes and ears. She held on to him tight, his neck pressed against her face, terrified for Rini. What was happening? What had happened to her, for her aura to have exploded like this, to have become so all-encompassing?

Were Mask and herself even still alive, or had they been vaporized in the explosion and sent to float in this afterlife?

Suddenly, Rini's aura vanished.

The sounds of her and Mask's harsh panting rushed back into Moon's ears. Along with it came the screech of crashing metal, the rumble of falling rock. Moon opened her eyes and saw Darien's white collar, ash-coated skin, black hair.

But she may as well still have been blind, for she barely registered these sights. All that she registered was the absence of auras all around them.

Her mind scrabbled out, sure that she had only missed them, had only overlooked. But there was nothing: no Black Moon, no Rini, and no dead Asanuma.

But they had been there. There was no pretending that it was just a hallucination she'd had. She could sense the afterimage, lingering like smoke from an explosion, of Rini's aura.

It was quickly dissipating, dissolving like Asanuma's had.

Only when Mask jerked did she become aware of the long, piercing cry that was reeling from her.

The sound, so close to Mask's ear, had to be hurting him. But she didn't stop. She cried and sobbed and shrieked and clawed and tried to push him off of her, to let her escape and go to that place where the traces of Rini's aura were dissolving into the air.

But he ground his teeth and struggled with her, pinning her back down, as choked-off sounds escaped from his own mouth. "Stop it, Serena," he kept muttering, jamming his forehead against hers to keep her head down, over and over again, brokenly. "The debris hasn't settled yet, Serena. I'm not going to let you get killed, Serena."

She tasted salt in her mouth, hot and wet. Maybe it was her tears, maybe it was his tears, or maybe it was blood from where she bit at his face and neck to _let me go_ –

"I'm not going to let you get killed," he whispered again, hot and harsh against her mouth, and she was choking, swallowing his pain as tears and blood dripped down his face to hers. "I'm _not_."

It was an eternity before the rumbling and crashes around them finally fell nearly silent. Rini's aura was gone, totally gone, but Moon had tattooed its spot into her mind.

Mask made to get off of her, pushing up on his elbows. But then he went still.

Moon pushed at his arms, still trapped by his weight, distantly aware that the dust-choked, hacking sobs coming from her chest were keeping her from pushing at him with all her strength.

Then she sensed it, too.

An aura, like dust kicked up, where Rini's aura had disappeared.

"No." Mask's voice was a pained inhalation. "No, no, no no _no_ – "

The aura wasn't Rini's. Moon had just enough time to realize that before they were both scrambling up, his hand tight around her arm, his thumb digging into her bruised skin, bursting up out of the brick and metal and glass that had half buried them, and struggling, stumbling, sprinting across the expanse of rubble that had once been their school. Neither bothered to duck the hanging metal struts and other masonry that blocked their way to the aura. Moon vaporized them as they loomed before them with silent beams from her sword, blowing them out of the way.

Then they stood on the lip of a small crater created by the mounds of wreckage. Moon could sense, through the touch of Mask's bare fingertips on her arm, that it was the courtyard where they had eaten so many lunches. The only remaining sign of what had once been there were a pile of tree branches and that must have been thrown into the air by the shockwave from Rini's power before they could be incinerated by the blast that had made the crater and showered back down when the blast dissipated.

One of the branches, half-buried beneath a pile of burnt bricks, was moving.

Moon took a step forward. Mask tightened his grip on her arm.

The branch and wreckage heaved again. Pieces of smaller brick trickled down it like rocks at the beginning of a rockslide.

Then something burst out of the wreckage, sending the bricks flying.

Plaster dust and ash flew into Moon's eyes, coating her mask. But she didn't turn away, squeezing her eyes shut and coughing. She heard the tree branch crash into something behind her.

She dared to slit her eyes open a millimeter.

Mask saw it before she did. His hand went tight around her arm, nearly snapping the bone. She heard him whisper, "Shit."

It took Moon a second longer to see the creature that was coughing in the nest of rubble, curled tightly around Rini's small, bloody body.

It took her a moment longer to register its pearl-white scales and small gold horns and slender, membranous wings as they melted slowly back into a torn blue kimono and curly brown hair.

When she did, her knees buckled. "_No_."

She understood, now, the familiarity of the aura. Understood why Buji had woken up before anyone when the youma attacked the park. Understood what those bumps on the top of his head had been. They poked out now, still, from beneath his dark curls.

Just like Helios's golden horn always poked from beneath his fair hair.

-

-

A/N: There was more to this chapter, but it was just too big. I'll try to have the next one out _very_ soon. Please give me feedback so that I can have some idea of what I need to improve for it. What did you like, what did you not? Were parts confusing?


	27. Chapter 27

A/N: You all are tremendously wonderful. Thank you SO MUCH for the reviews! They help me out not only with STC but in getting through everyday life. And wow. The thoughts and theories that you guys have put into them – you're thinking a lot about the story! It's the hugest compliment for you to have invested so much speculation into it.

Something that more than one reviewer mentioned – was it _me_ who said Mikai and Minako were intended for each other, or was it a _character_ who said it? Heheheh…

Please note: last chapter, Serena told Darien that girls had hyperactive EMOTIONS. It is supposed to be IMAGINATIONS. Please forgive the mistake.

Also note: I couldn't find a way to insert it into this chapter, though it may come later, but the reason that Darien did not heal Asanuma when he came to the cafeteria was that he was too busy stopping the Wiseman from sucking Rini in. Despite Moon and Rubeus holding onto her, if Darien had not been attacking and distracting the Wiseman, the Wiseman would have been able to get Rini and teleport away.

A billion thanks you's to Jade Eye, who gave me so much help and such a patient ear for the events of this chapter and the next few! You deserve a harem of Zac Efrons in black jackets!

This chapter's title comes from a conversation between the Shittenou and Darien in manga volume 5.

Disclaimer: Sailor Moon doesn't belong to me. _I_ belong to Sailor Moon. (sigh) Or so it feels, sometimes. (bangs at giant crystal like Darien trying to get out of Fiore's trap) Let me out!

-

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Twenty-Seven: You Must Be Strong, Great…and Irreplaceable

-

_It took Moon a second longer to see the creature that was coughing in the nest of rubble, curled tightly around Rini's small, bloody body._

_It took her a moment longer to register is pearl-white scales and small gold horns and slender, membranous wings as they melted slowly back into a torn blue kimono and curly brown hair._

_When she did, her knees buckled. "No."_

_She understood, now, the familiarity of the aura. Understood why Buji had woken up before anyone when the youma attacked the park. Understood what those bumps on the top of his head had been. They poked out now, still, from beneath his dark curls._

_Just like Helios' golden horn had always poked from beneath his fair hair._

_-_

Tuxedo Mask stood, panting, at Sailor Moon's elbow, looking down at the two children. His aura snapped and buckled like a swarm of whips.

Then he jerked. "She's breathing."

Moon followed his wide-eyed gaze. Below the unconscious Buji's arm, which was lying across Rini where his scaly white wing had hung over her a moment before, Rini's chest was moving very slowly up and down.

Moon sprang forward, crouching to gather the little girl into her arms.

"Don't move her!" he said sharply. "Her spine might be injured!"

"Then heal it!" shouted Moon, snatching Rini up and whirling to face him. She shoved out her arms with the girl in them, like an offering. _Asanuma's dead, we can't lose Rini, too – _

"What are you waiting for?"

"I can't _sense_ her!" he snapped. Then his eyes grew wide, and he pressed his lips together, the skin around them turning white. He looked almost scared. "Her aura is nonexistent, I can't sense her if I can't feel anything – "

But Moon was too terrified herself to notice his agitation. She pushed Rini toward him. "Then take her to Helios! He'll know! He has to know! Take her!"

"I'm not leaving you – "

"_Take her_!"

"NO!" he yelled, eyes flaring gold – and then that frightened look swept across his masked face again. His voice went low, pleading. "Serena, if that thing comes back, it'll kill you – "

"I'll kill you if you don't take her!"

There was no pleading in Serena's shriek. It was a threat, backed up by a glowing tiara and wild eyes.

She shoved Rini's body into his arms.

"GO!" she screamed.

A snarl curled in the back of his throat. Then, with Rini's body dangling from his arms, he disappeared.

Moon swiped her hand across her face, choking on a smothered sob, and collapsed to her knees beside Buji. Barely had she brushed her fingers across his cold, smudged face before she and the boy suddenly disappeared, too.

-

Asanuma leapt across the last rooftop and clambered down a fire escape where he had felt, with his unimpressive aura-sensing skills, a youma – and, if he wasn't mistaken, a Shittenou.

"Oh," he said when he saw the green-haired man standing in the cracked, torn-up Akihabara street in front of a pile of youma dust. "It's you."

Mikai turned around. When his eyes landed on Asanuma, he grinned and opened his mouth.

Then the grin dropped from Mikai's lips. Eyes wide, he pivoted. Then pivoted again, looking all around them.

Asanuma took a step backward as Mikai's eyes fell on him. The older man opened his mouth to speak.

Then, again, his mouth closed and his eyes widened. Slowly, his arm rose to his ear. His hand hovered there. He pressed his finger against it, frowning.

"Hello!" said Asanuma, angrily; for a second he had been afraid that something had possessed Mikai, some sort of flash-form. "This isn't the time to be digging for earwax! Didn't you see that explosion?"

He spun around, heading back for the fire escape to continue toward the spot he'd seen the white light explode from.

"Shit." Mikai's voice was a mutter behind him.

Asanuma turned around. A trickle of clear fluid dripped from Mikai's ear onto his tunic, darkening the brown fabric.

Asanuma blanched. He had known Mikai's brain was screwed up, but if there was clear fluid leaking out of his ear, something really was wrong with it.

"Stay put," he heard himself say. "I'll find Darien. Don't move."

Mikai did the exact opposite. He took off running.

Asanuma swore and shot after him. "Mikai! Mikai, you asshole, get back here!"

People, huddled inside stores and buildings, fully conscious and peering out the windows, stared at them sprinting down the asphalt. Asanuma stopped shouting Mikai's name and instead just yelled obscenities after him, since Darien would be the one chewing Asanuma out if he blew their identities like this. The Shittenou had glamours to cover their faces, but those wouldn't do much good if someone heard him screaming Mikai's name.

Although who knew if he hadn't already blown his cover with Rei's bastard dad…

The green-haired Shittenou bolted right suddenly, off the sidewalk and up a driveway. The house that the driveway led to didn't look all that different from Serena's. Mikai tore through the front door, and before it had time to slam shut behind him, Asanuma was darting through it as well.

The room he burst into was clearly a living room; there were couches and a coffee table and a giant TV with shelves and shelves of DVDs and video games, but Asanuma only noted all that peripherally. He heard Mikai bursting into other rooms deeper into the house, yanking doors open one after another.

Asanuma followed the sounds, only to jump back as Mikai burst back out of the hallway and charged past him to the kitchen. He was so tense that his tendons were sticking out of his bare arms in a gross, steroid-y way, but at least there wasn't anything dripping from his ear anymore.

"Shit," said Mikai again when he saw that the kitchen was empty. "Shit shit shit shit – " He whirled toward the door again.

"Wait!" yelled Asanuma. "Would you STOP? What are you looking for?"

"Mercury put a transmitter in my ear." Mikai wrenched open the front door. "She hasn't used it since Christmas Eve, but when we were in the street just now, I heard Ami call me, then the transmitter melted in my ear." He was taking the front steps two at a time. "Sometime must have caused Mercury to lose control over it, she needs me, I've got to find her – "

Asanuma grabbed Mikai's arm. "Where else she could be? Tell me where to look."

"The arcade." Mikai's free arm lifted, fingers gripping his hair. "It's destroyed, but Ami might not know that – I could tell she was really attached to it – I'll check the garage, Mercury came there once – "

Asanuma was already in motion. "I'll call you if I find her!"

Mikai broke into a run for the garage where he worked. The frigid January air cut like a knife into his ear as it whistled against the wet skin that Mercury's melted transmitter had left behind.

-

"Helios!" Mask roared. The bones in his hands were burning. Unbidden, uncontrolled, the muscles and bones in his panicked throat twisted, letting out a hawk's piercing shrieks. They tore through the still air and echoed across the gently rolling hills.

Seconds later, the white-haired priest came swooping into sight. At the same time, golden light flashed at the edge of Mask's vision.

He whipped around just in time to see Sailor Moon and Buji's unconscious body plow into the grass beside his feet.

Helios' wings snapped wide with shock for a half-second, as did Mask's wild eyes. Then Helios wrenched his wings closed and dropped to the ground before Mask.

Moon lunged to her feet. Buji dangled in her arms. A ridge of tiny golden nubs peeked out through holes in the back of his kimono. "Helios! What's wrong with them? Why can't we sense Rini?"

Helios was staring at Buji, but he forced his eyes back down to Rini, in Mask's trembling arms.

He passed a hand over her face, hovering at her eyes.

"Her aura has been exhausted. Very violently."

"But she's alive?"

Helios nodded. "She should awake soon, I think."

And indeed, Rini's breathing had already begun to tangle and quicken as she lay in Mask's arms. Her eyes darted beneath their lids, her small lips twisting to form a grimace that he knew well from his own reflection.

Protectiveness, for the first time, swooped through him, and he could barely keep his arms from crushing her as they tightened. His head fell to press against hers, the acrid scent of ash and dust from her hair nearly deafening to his heightened sense of smell.

"Elysion's air allows her to absorb energy from the dreamflowers," Helios said.

Had Mask looked up, he would have seen the priest watching the child with extreme interest. He did not, and so he did not see, either, the faint stream of golden motes floating like dust into Rini's mouth as she inhaled slowly.

"She will be very drowsy when you return to the outside world. You should not be alarmed if she sleeps for a long time."

The salty scent of Moon's relieved tears coated Mask's tongue.

"And Buji?" said her voice. "He's fine, too?"

Mask's jaw went stiff against Rini's forehead.

"He may sleep for longer." Helios' soft voice was too loud. "He has given Hime-sama nearly all of his energy to replace hers."

Moon let out a shaky laugh and pressed Buji's head to her collarbone with one hand, rocking back and forth. Her other hand held Rini's tightly.

"Helios." Mask's voice was a rasp. "How did Serena and Buji get here?"

Moon's rocking faltered.

Helios' reply was just as quiet. "I think you know the answer to that, Darien-sama."

Mask took a long breath. He put Rini down among the flowers. "Change him back."

"I cannot do that, Darien-sama."

"Change him _back_."

"There is no way. Once an Elysian priest has been chosen, the choice cannot be unmade."

"He wasn't chosen!"

"Darien-sama, there are three animal forms that Elysian priests may take. A unicorn, a phoenix, a dragon. These forms have marks that appear on a priest when he is chosen."

Helios touched the horn atop his own head, lifted a hand toward the two golden horns on Buji's head, the nubs on his back.

"A priest cannot be unchosen after the crystal has chosen him. The crystal has chosen this boy as your daughter's Elysian priest, marking him with a dragon's horns. Why do you fight this so?"

"Asanuma's dead." Mask's cane appeared in his hand. "I'll cut those horns off Buji's head before I let him get pulled into this."

Sailor Moon started. Her eyes flew up to Mask's. Inside them thrashed a wildness that yanked to her mind the memory of the melting, writhing, uncontrollable creature that he had been the last time she was in Elysion.

The blade made a metallic sound as it pushed out of Mask's cane.

Somewhere inside her, a voice was screaming at Moon to get up and stop this from happening, but larger, darker, loomed an image of Asanuma. Beaten, half-blind. Armored by his own dried blood. Dragging himself along the floor like the lepers she had seen in movies.

How could they let Buji become one of them, knowing that he might end up like that? How could she ever face Mayuko if she did that?

She hugged Buji close, as much to keep him immobilized if he woke up as to steady her own suddenly shaking body. And she kept her eyes on Darien's, behind his mask, for she would not let him do this thing that felt so terrible, so wrong, alone. She would be part of it. She would be guilty, too.

Mask lifted his foot to take the final step toward them, his cane-blade lifting in his arm.

In mid-step, he froze.

His leg, lifted to take another step, hung where it was, the tips of the grass brushing his shoe. A faint breeze whispered through, carrying on it the scent of that white aura.

Moon turned her head and saw Rini, lying in the grass, her eyes open and glowing the same white as the aura.

They burned into Tuxedo Mask.

Mask stared back at his daughter, his eyes glowing ever so slightly gold.

For a moment, neither of them said nothing.

Then Rini sat up and said, in a shaking voice that did not match the blankness of her glowing eyes, "You didn't save him."

Mask's eyes squeezed shut. The tendons in his neck stood out like snakes, as though he was straining very hard against something.

Helios, in the corner of Moon's vision, was staring at Rini. Horror rounded his pale eyes.

Only when she saw this did Moon realize why Mask's leg was still bent in mid-step. Disbelief filtered through her.

He had been frozen into that position. Rini had used her powers to immobilize _Darien_.

Darien, whom not even Chaos' most powerful assassin had been able to control.

"Rini," Moon whispered.

But Rini shrieked, cutting her off. Her voice soared and cracked with tears. "You didn't _save_ him!"

Darien's agitation was building like carbonation inside a shaken soda bottle. Golden energy began to crackle in his eyes. His arm, pinned to his side, strained against the weight of Rini's power and began to lift itself.

Rini's glowing eyes flashed. His arm slammed back into his side.

Mask's eyes blazed. His mask fell from his face, fluttered to the ground. His lips smashed together by Rini's power, unable to speak, he tore out with his power. Roots ripped from the ground around Rini's feet and seized her.

Rini screamed. A single white flash vaporized the roots. Darien slammed into the ground, yanked by the same invisible force that immobilized him.

Helios darted to his side.

White power flung him aside. "You let him die!" Rini shrieked, still crying.

"Rini, he came – " Moon finally found her voice. "He tried – "

"No!" Rini screamed. "He didn't! He left Asanuma to die, both of them did, you didn't even care!" She was crying at Darien now. "Why did you even have me if you were just going to let me die?"

"Stop it!" Moon shouted to be heard over Rini's shrieks. "Rini, stop!"

To Helios, still on his knees, she gave Buji; then she rushed to stand between Rini and Darien.

"Darien came for you!" She seized the little girl's face between her hands and yanked it down, forcing the scalding white eyes to meet hers. "He came! For _you_!"

The child's breaths began to calm, dragging themselves into her mouth in knotted, keening gasps.

Then they splintered again, back into sobs.

"But he doesn't," she cried. Her nose and eyes streamed onto Moon's gloved hands, still cradling her face. "He did now, but he _doesn't_…"

Behind her, Darien's turmoil was building even higher now. A suspicion was whirling up inside him.

But Moon did not turn around, did not dare look away from the child who seemed to be breaking into pieces before her.

"I don't understand," she whispered. "What do you mean? We came to save him…"

"That wasn't your Asanuma," Rini sobbed. "That was _mine_."

-

The Four Sisters were not actually Rubeus' sisters. They were a set of modified youma created in one of Sapphire's experiments attempting to strengthen youma.

Though a success in their human-like appearances and auras, the sisters were a failure in their usefulness. They were entirely dependent on an outside source of energy to fuel their existences. It was necessary that a being of powerful aura link them to his or her life-force in order for the sisters to have any power at all.

Diamond, who did not wish to waste the energy that had been expended on this experiment of Sapphire's, handed the four modified youma off to Emerald. Who welcomed them in much the same way one might welcome a box of mangy stray kittens: she tried to drown them.

Sapphire caught her at it before the little brats got more than a few milliliters of water in their lungs. He warned her, with his usual dark-eyed indifference, that she should reconsider her action, for Prince Diamond would not be pleased to see wasted the energy that had been spent to create the sisters.

Emerald gave in, for she had sought Diamond's approval in all things since he took her from the orphanage years ago. But really, this was too much. Just because she had breasts did not mean that she should have to raise these aura-parasites.

She was probably one of the Black Moon members the least suited for it, in fact. For her aura, while highly disciplined, was not very great. Forced to split what she could spare of it between the four of them, the Sisters were confined to children's forms, barely bigger than the Terran princess they sought. They were fierce and rage-eyed but butter-limbed – as good as useless.

Diamond, who had expected some usefulness from them after a few weeks training with Emerald, regarded them with disdain, and that cavalier contempt spilled over to Emerald.

Whom it infuriated. She would have made do with her scarce power and won Diamond's heart by now if not for these leeches.

Driven by rage, under the guise of training them, she beat them, cut them where it would keep them from beauty, pierced them with the cruelest verbal arrows about their very existence. Torture was taught by using demonstrations with them as the examples, and blows were demonstrated using one of them as the training dummy. And before they left each session, she healed them so that none would see the marks of her malice.

But then Prince Diamond found that cursed ruby and set free that even more cursed blood demon. And Sapphire had murmured to his brother that perhaps the sisters should be transferred to the demon's care: his aura was exponentially more powerful than Emerald's, and the Sisters could grow powerful under him to be of some use to the Black Moon's cause.

So the tiny, suspicious sisters, their hackles raised, more like stray dogs than stray kittens, had been brought before the silent and wild-eyed Rubeus.

Who had regarded them almost as warily as they did him. They stared at each other for a long moment, the blood demon and the sisters, until Prisma, the oldest, stepped ahead of the others. She shoved her hand out to Rubeus, with a look on her face that said that no matter what he was, he couldn't be worse than what they already had.

The other three sisters, still clinging to Prisma with their pudgy fists, turned their eyes up to Rubeus. He met their apprehensive gazes, and without even looking to Prince Diamond for approval, as he had done in all things before this, he had lifted his hand and closed it around Prisma's.

His red-black energy had crackled out, flickered through all four of the sisters' veins, outlining their skeletons in blood-colored threads.

Then suddenly all four of them were adult-sized, tall and powerful.

Prince Diamond had smiled his quiet approval, Sapphire had slipped away, and Emerald had seethed. But Rubeus had stared into the eyes of the sisters who were now his and been able, for the first time, to put away from his mind the memory of the phoenix-blood ruby.

But the memory came back, now, as he crashed into the glassy floor of the Black Moon's mother ship.

Above him, the Wiseman's aura flattened his body against the hard surface. It crushed his ribs until he could barely breathe, a suffocating prison. The floor pushed the bones of his nose into his skull, a sharp pain between his eyes, which could see only his own blood pooling on the glassy floor.

The same crimson as his phoenix-blood prison.

"Rubeus!"

"Rubeus!"

"_Rubeus_!"

He heard them crying. But he could not lift his head. Couldn't even flick his energy to let them know he was alright, for the Wiseman had bound that, too.

"What is the meaning of this, Wiseman?" His prince's voice, commanding.

"_Rubeus betrayed us, Your Highness_." The Wiseman's whisper, accompanied by the swirl of energy that always signaled his use of the crystal ball hovering between his hands. _"He allied himself with Endymion's Shittenou and kept the princess from me. I barely escaped with my life when she used her power. He betrayed us."_

Of course it would look like that, Rubeus thought hopelessly as he heard the scene from moments earlier, in that school's cafeteria, replaying itself in the Wiseman's crystal ball for Prince Diamond and the others to see. What the Wiseman had seen was Rubeus trying to save the Shittenou, grabbing the princess from the Wiseman's grasp, and attacking the Wiseman. All actions of complete and total treason.

Even if he had been able to speak, there would have been no point in attempting to protest that he was not a traitor.

But as the sounds of the scene ended, Sapphire's expressionless voice rang out. "Ridiculous." His voice was tinged, for once, with the faintest trace of anger. "Rubeus would no sooner betray Diamond than one of the sisters would betray Rubeus."

Hope lit, painful and hot, inside Rubeus.

"_If my crystal ball was not showing the truth, your brother's eye would know it."_

"The eye that you gave him?" Sapphire's voice was as hard as his name. "Yes, I'm sure it would contradict something you wanted us to believe."

"Silence, Sapphire," said Prince Diamond's voice. It was dismissive, almost distracted. "The Wiseman knows better than to betray me. He has need of me, not I of him."

Rubeus' hope wavered, guttering like a candle. Its weakening was even more painful than its igniting had been. For Sapphire, who cared for nothing but his experiments, to have defended him, while his prince so easily and quickly believed that Rubeus had betrayed him…

He did not hear what was said after this, for his sisters had fallen around him, crying and reaching for his wounds.

"No…" he tried to whisper. But he could barely hear himself.

Was this what the Shittenou had felt? Unable to speak, unable to warn the ones he loved to run. Was this why he had broken his blood oath to Rubeus? Was this why he had gone to his prince instead of fought with Rubeus against the Wiseman?

If it was, he found that he couldn't feel hatred for the Shittenou. Only understanding. Gladness, even, that the Shittenou had been able to fulfill his duty to his prince as Rubeus had failed to do…

"Pris…ma…" he struggled to be heard. She was the oldest; she had to think of her sisters' safety, that was her job. "Pris…"

But her low voice was crying with her sisters', her long calloused fingers trembling as they pressed down, trying to staunch a wound to his abdomen. She did not hear him.

If only he could save them. The frightened, wild little beings who deserved to be able to live. Surely, if he could just manage to utter a plea, Diamond would not deny him a request to protect the sisters. Surely at least after all the loyal work Rubeus had done for him before this, he would honor one request…

Catzi's voice, frightened. "Rubeu – "

Then it cut off. The sisters' auras around him vanished.

Rubeus sucked in a shocked breath.

And choked on a mouthful of ash.

Horror filled him.

It was the last thing he felt before the Wiseman's blast of power incinerated him.

-

Crying and wailing were the first things that entered Buji's consciousness.

For a moment, he thought that his little sister had already been born, and he opened his eyes eagerly, shocked that he had missed such a momentous event! Had Kaa-chan named her Michaelangela like he'd wanted?

But it wasn't the sight of his baby sister's bedroom or even a hospital room that met his eyes.

It was Sailor Moon on her knees in the middle of a field on flowers, staring at Rini Tsukino. Who was sobbing like a kindergartener, her fists in her eyes and body shaking.

Buji stared at this scene for a long moment, blinking several times to check that he was seeing correctly.

Then, as he realized that someone was holding him, he looked up.

A very unfamiliar, very pale man's face looked back down at him. He looked as shocked as Buji felt.

Buji realized that he was staring very rudely at the golden horn sticking out of the man's head. Hearing his mother scolding him in the back of his head, he quickly redirected his gaze to the man's eyes. They were so pale that they reflected Buji's face as clearly as two mirrors.

And in the reflection, Buji saw two horns poking out of his own hair.

He let out a shout. Tumbling out of the man's hold, he grabbed at the top of his head. He landed face-first on the ground, his hands too busy feeling for the horns on his head to catch him. They were there, alright, two horns, each one a little longer than his pointer finger and twisted slightly like the tops of the ice cream cones from Toki-nii-chan's arcade.

Another sensation hit Buji, then, as he realized that there was a draft across his back. He let go of the horns for long enough to feel his back. His eyes widened again, and he sat up, slapping both hands to the ridge of tiny horns that ran down his backbone.

In his upright position, Buji's wide, shocked eyes landed on the horned, white-haired man again.

And on someone else, who crouched on the ground beside him, pushing on his mask, grass and dirt all down his black front.

_Tuxedo Mask_.

Disbelieving, his eyes flicked back to what he had first seen: there were Rini and _Sailor Moon_, still kneeling opposite each other. Sailor Moon was looking at him dazedly, as though she barely even saw him.

Rini was staring at him with disbelief. Beneath the tear trails streaking through the ash that caked her face, her mouth was slack.

"You," she whispered.

"Me," agreed Buji, comforted. Rini always greeted him like that; things couldn't be too bad if she was still treating him like usual. He sidled closer to her, casting an apprehensive look at the white-haired man. "Um…hi, Sailor Moon, Tuxedo Mask. I…I'm not a youma, am I?"

They all just stared at him.

Then, a full minute later, as though she had only just heard him, Sailor Moon gasped in a breath and shot to her feet.

"No! No, of course not, sweetheart! How do you feel?" She seized his hands, and Buji could not help but frown at her, for her voice and behavior seemed awfully familiar. "Does your back hurt? What about your head?"

"No!"

This sudden shout came from Rini.

Buji flinched, looking away from Sailor Moon to frown at his classmate – instead, he saw Tuxedo Mask had suddenly appeared at his elbow. For some reason, the sharp blade glinting in his idol's hand made him swallow instead of feel excited.

"Stop it," Rini said. She looked like she was about to throw up as she looked at Mask. "What are you doing?"

Buji watched as Tuxedo Mask's hand entered his vision, his index finger touching his forehead. He felt some sort of fuzzy warmth began to swirl there…

"Don't worry." His voice was quiet, soothing. "Just go to sleep for a while…"

"No!" shouted Rini's voice at the same time someone else cried, "Darien-sama!"

This jerked Buji out of the haziness softening the edges of his consciousness. He blinked rapidly and looked around. "Darien?"

Tuxedo Mask pulled back but didn't take his hand from where it hovered above Buji's face. "Nice, Helios."

Buji's eyes refocused, zooming in on the blue eyes behind Tuxedo Mask's mask. "_Darien-baka_?"

Another realization burst in his mind, then, too, and he whipped his head around to spear Sailor Moon on wide brown eyes. "Serena?"

Sailor Moon looked at him for one second, her eyes just as big in her smooth, unscarred face.

Then a faint smile pulled at the side of her mouth like a fishing hook. She looked both happy and sad. "Yes, Honey Bunny."

Buji's jaw dropped. He turned his gaze back up to Tuxedo Mask – _Darien_ – and was met by the gloved hand still hovering in front of his face.

"What's the big idea?" he complained, pushing it out of the way.

But the expression on Darien's face – for he had, with a pained sound, taken off his mask – stopped Buji from saying anything more.

The boy looked at Rini, at Serena, at the white-haired man. It was to this last person that he said, "What is it?" He touched, tentatively, one of the horns on his head. "What happened to me?"

"You are an Elysian priest," began the white man, "meant to guide and protect the princess and this – "

"Helios, stop." Darien's voice was sharp.

Buji's eyes snapped to him. "I have powers?" he said, sounding less demanding than he had intended. His mouth was dry as Darien regarded him. He tried to remember that if he had powers, if he was like the Senshi, he could protect his mom, and his sister…

"You're just dreaming," Darien's voice was slow and fuzzy. "This is a very strange dream because of all the food you ate at the party."

Buji vaguely felt his eyelids beginning to slide down… heard a sound like scissors parting, like a knife…

"Helios, hold Rini back."

"Darien-sama – "

"You know what, he doesn't need to hold me back! I'm not going to stop you. Go ahead and cut off his horns! Maybe then Asanuma won't die!"

A pause. "Rini, what…"

"I said go ahead. Cut them off!"

"Darien – "

"I said cut them off!" This was a shriek, and it jarred Buji. His eyelids twitched apart, so slightly, barely enough to see the black blur pulling away from him.

"Rini, what do you mean? Tell me now, or – "

"Do you want Asanuma to live or not? Cut off the horns!"

"How will that save Asanuma?" Angrily. "What difference does it make?"

"Buji's my priest," Rini's voice spat. "He teaches me in my dreams in the future how to transform. If he doesn't get his powers, he won't train me, I won't be able to transform, the Black Moon will get me the first time they try, and Asanuma won't have to fight them and die!"

Asanuma…die? It was very hard to think, to understand… Buji tried weakly to push at the confusion muddling his brain…

Then, abruptly, the confusion fell away.

He blinked and stared at Darien's white, white face.

There was someone behind Buji, gripping his shoulders. He didn't need to look behind him to know that it was Serena.

Darien looked at him. He had a look that Kaa-chan sometimes got, a stricken look that made Buji want to wrap his arms around her to protect her and to hide in a closet at the same time.

It seemed like an eternity before he spoke. And when he did, it was to the white-haired man. "You'll teach him how to transform and how to teach Rini to transform," he said, not looking at Buji. "Nothing more."

Serena's hand squeezed Buji's shoulder. He reached for it, let her strong fingers enclose his hand.

"Asanuma's dead?" he whispered.

He regretted asking it when he felt her fingers go limp. He looked at her, saw her biting her lip and staring into the distance, eyelashes trembling and wet, and turned to look at Darien and Rini instead.

"We need to go now," said Darien. His hand, much bigger than Serena's, closed around Buji's arm, and with his other hand, he touched Rini's back, uncertainly.

Everything around them disappeared. Then, abruptly, Buji was stumbling against dirt and brick.

He looked around and saw what looked like the end of the world. Beneath their feet and rising in hills above them were piles of bricks and wood and glass and metal, all twisted and burned and broken.

"What _happened_?" he heard himself say. His eyes, as they swung around to take in all the wreckage, happened to land on Rini's face. She looked sick again.

"Youma attacked." Darien pushed his mask on again.

Buji was beginning to feel as sick as Rini looked. Darien had never seemed so upset with him, not even at Christmas when he had wandered off in the mall and Darien hadn't been able to find him. What had he done? Had he been part of the youma attack; had he made all this wreckage?

His eyes, avoiding Tuxedo Mask's and Sailor Moon's in shame, went to Rini yet again. Her kimono was torn and burnt, her feet bare but for the cuff of a burned tabi sock hanging from her ankle. How was she involved in all this? She knew who Darien and Serena were, and she had said he was her priest…

She had also said that Asanuma had died.

Sirens suddenly were wailing around them. Serena – Sailor Moon – spun around as the rattle of falling rubble came from behind.

Two firemen in full gear with flashlights in their hands appeared over the crest of the tumbled masonry. When they saw the superheroes and children, they stopped short.

Sailor Moon inhaled as Tuxedo Mask exhaled. In the darkness, his eyes began to glow.

"Go," he said. "I'll be right behind you."

"What's he doing?" asked Buji as Moon crouched in front of him, pulling him piggy-back onto her back, and gathered Rini up in her arms.

"Making sure they don't remember seeing you two," she answered as she rose back to her feet, swaying a little under his and Rini's combined weight.

Then she jumped. Buji's arms tightened convulsively around her. The freezing night air whooshing past him as the ground stretched out far beneath them, he felt like he was on the parachute ride at the amusement park, being jerked up, up, up, before hurtling suddenly down.

"You alright?" asked a taut voice beside him. Buji started again and nearly released his hold on Sailor Moon's neck. He was nearly as shocked when he saw that the voice belonged to Tuxedo Mask, who was now leaping through the air with them.

He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, a ring filled the whistling, siren-filled air.

Mask reached into a pocket somewhere on his tuxedo and took out a cell phone. He looked at the display.

Moon stopped, abruptly, skidding through the gravel on the rooftop and nearly stumbling to her knees.

"It's him?" she demanded of Mask.

Who gave a tight nod before he flipped open the phone. "Asanuma?"

-

"I guess it's too much to ask that we get through one battle without someone showing bone." Jupiter grumbled as she hefted Motoki's mail-sheathed arm over her shoulder to help him limp along. His leg on the opposite side was the one showing bone, a bit of his patella through a window of flesh that looked like hamburger meat. Jupiter grimaced, swearing off burgers for the rest of her life.

Darien would be able to fix it in a second, she knew, but she couldn't sense him at the moment. Which just served to make her more annoyed at him, and at Mikai, and at basically the whole male race in general, for they were all a bunch of stupid idiots –

As though he knew the path her thoughts were taking, Motoki gave her that heartbreaking happy-sad smile that never failed to catch at her heart. She glowered against it. "Don't even try that on me. You're in big trouble, mister. You were supposed to stick with Mikai."

He hummed a little, hazy-eyed. She was pretty sure that he had sustained some head damage as well as that ugly knee wound: when she'd found him ten minutes ago, the youma had been pounding his face against a wall as he stabbed it repeatedly with a fancy new naginata that, he'd mumbled to her as she dusted the youma, Mikai had given to her.

Mikai, who was going to get a blistered ear and blistered other parts, too, when she got a hold of him. Shields had told him to stay with Motoki, dammit!

Motoki mumbled something that sounded like a question about what she thought the flash of white light had come from.

"Probably Serena and Darien," said Jupiter. She felt very worried, for she couldn't sense either of their auras. Motoki hadn't sensed that, though, and she wasn't about to tell him and make him worry. Not just yet.

"Asaduba…be pissed he…bissed all de fud."

"Asanuma'll be pissed he missed all the fun?" Jupiter translated. "Yeah…"

Actually, based on what she'd felt, she wasn't so sure that he had, but again, this wasn't something she was about to say to Toki. She kept them moving toward where the white light had come from, and brightened as suddenly Serena and Shields' auras reappeared to her senses.

"We god id, do" said Motoki suddenly.

She was confused as to what he was talking about until he waved the naginata still in his other hand.

"Oh, the youma," she said. "Yup. We did." She eyed the youma-dust-covered naginata blade. Douchebag though Mikai was, that was a damn nice weapon…

Motoki, through his half-lidded eyes, saw the direction of her eyes. "Wand id?" He twitched his hand with the naginata at her.

"Ha," scoffed Jupiter. "I don't need it. I eat youma for breakfast."

Motoki made a sound that Lita had never heard before, something like a _splurt_. She glanced up at him and saw him laughing, the blood from his broken nose spattered across his mouth as though he had snorted. "I – rebember!" he gasped around his laughter. "That tibe id the arcade – whed you weren'd even transforbed – you bit that youba!"

Jupiter cackled a little herself, remembering this. "It tasted like your pickled radishes."

"Ugh!" Motoki was offended now. "Did dot!"

"Well, it probably tastes better than _you_ do, right now," reconsidered Jupiter, leering a little at his bloody nose and blood-spattered mouth.

Motoki flushed and grinned, ducking his head in for a kiss before leaning his head against hers again.

It was strange that she could find herself feeling content at that moment, dragging her battered boyfriend along the streets after a youma attack that had just totally ruined their New Year's Party, but she did.

She had the feeling it wasn't going to last very long, though. Moments like this never did. Jupiter sighed and pulled Motoki's arm tighter around her shoulders.

-

"Yeah, it's me. Listen, Ami called Mikai, we're trying to – what? No, we can't stay put!" Asanuma pulled his cell phone away from his ear, looking at it as though it had sprouted a head, then put it back. "Are you crazy – Dare?"

But no one was on the other end of the line; Darien had hung up. Which meant he was expecting Asanuma to do as he'd said and stay put until he showed up.

"For God's sake," he muttered, then switched back to the other line, where he'd put Mikai on hold to call Darien. "Kentaro, he hung up on me. I gotta wait for him. Keep going, and I'll catch up."

Several police officers on motorbikes were speeding down the street now, though, so Asanuma dared not stay out in the street. He crept into the first alley with a fire escape that he found and scrambled up it to the freezing, wind-sliced rooftop.

Which was where Tuxedo Mask, Sailor Moon, Rini, and – surprise! – Buji showed up five minutes later, wide-eyed and white-faced. He didn't know why _they_ were looking at him like they'd seen a ghost. He wasn't the one who'd shown up with a behorned second-grader in tow.

"What happened to _you_?" he demanded of the kid as he slid down from Serena's back.

Buji only looked at him for a minute, not responding, before he cast an apprehensive look up at the other three.

Asanuma looked at them, too. Darien's irises were fairly burning in the siren-streaked darkness, and suddenly he was gripping Asanuma's shoulder tightly.

Acutely aware of all the rules he'd broken that day, Asanuma expected to be punched, but then Serena's arms were around his waist, and she was squeezing him even more tightly than Mask was.

Asanuma stared down at the top of her head, then at Darien, who was… "No way, are you _crying_? Dare, what the hell? What happened?"

He looked past his friend, to where Mask had deposited Rini after they landed on the rooftop, certain that she would, in her usual no-nonsense way, explain what had Darien and Serena suddenly becoming his own personal barnacles.

But she was crouched in the gravel, staring emptily at her hands in front of her.

Immediately, he pulled away from Moon and Mask, trying to get to Rini. "Rini. What – "

But the brown-haired girl was standing up now, albeit shakily. "I'm going back."

Serena pulled away from Asanuma. "Rini – wait – "

"Don't worry," Rini said. "I'll make up a story to tell your mom." When Serena shook her head, she said, almost acidly, "What? After what I did to your school, you don't think I can handle walking a few blocks alone?"  
"You're not, anyway," said Buji before anyone else could say anything. "I'm going, too. Kaa-chan's probably torn the Furuhatas' house apart looking for me by now."

Rini looked at him, and the slightest spark of her usual self seemed to touch her. "_I_'m not making up a story to explain those horns to your mom."

"Oh." Buji's brow furrowed in consternation.

Mask pursed his lips and pulled off his tuxedo jacket, which was dusty and torn but would cover the golden spikes on Buji's back.

"No." Moon was shaking her head. "You can't go home alone, just wait for us to…" But Rini wasn't looking at her, and she trailed off, looking lost and heartbroken. She looked at Mask, whose lips were still white, and, her face creasing, didn't say anything more.

"I've got a hat," said Asanuma quickly into the awkward silence.

From his Subspace pocket, he took a wrinkled ski cap with ear flaps and tugged it over Buji's head. He leaned back to inspect it. The knitted material was lumpy enough that no one looking at the kid would assume that those two rather large lumps under the hat were horns. "That pom-pom is _so_ sexy, dahrling."

No one made any retorts about him being a pedophile. No one even cracked a smile. Asanuma eyed them all uneasily.

Rini climbed down the fire escape without looking at him, or anyone else, and Buji followed her.

When the fire escape had stopped shaking, meaning that the two children had made it to the ground, Asanuma turned back to his two friends.

"So?" He folded his arms over his chest uncomfortably, shivering in the cold. "What happened?"

Serena told most of the story. The bits that Darien related were bitten out in small, hard chunks as though they hurt. Serena's parts were rambled and confused, and she kept switching between looking into his eyes as she spoke and avoiding them.

What he understood was that after he'd left, when the party had begun, Rini had bolted from the Furuhatas' house. They had sensed a very weak aura that felt like his with an aura that belonged to someone from the Black Moon, and at the same time, a bunch of youma had appeared all over Tokyo. Serena and Darien had gone after Rini and found her in the school cafeteria. She had been with a red-haired man from the Black Moon; a powerful being that reeked of Chaos even more strongly than Kisenian Blossom had; and him, beaten and dying. The red-haired man, for some reason, had protected Rini from the Chaos being, but he had disappeared along with the Wiseman when Rini lost control and gone supernova with her power. Serena and Darien had thought that she was dead, but Buji had actually protected her in the form of a white dragon; he was apparently her Elysian priest.

It was all a very interesting story, and Asanuma told them so, but they had left something out.

"I wasn't in the school cafeteria. I was just leaving the subway when that light exploded. So the aura that felt like mine was…?"

He trailed off, watching their expressions.

"Yes." Serena's throat jumped beneath her moon choker as she swallowed. She looked at Darien. "Rini said that the Asanuma in the cafeteria was the you from the future. He came backward in time."

Asanuma was already nodding in comprehension. For some asinine reason, he kept nodding as he said, "And? You didn't say what happened to him."

Already he knew what must have happened. How could he not know what had happened, with them looking the way they did? But an ugly part of him wanted to make them say it because it clearly hurt them so much to do it.

He wanted to hear them say that he had died so that they would feel worse than he did.

Serena burst into tears. He wanted to push her away from him as she tightened her arms around his waist. He didn't, though; instead he pushed down that ugly part of him and nodded as Darien said tightly that the Asanuma from the future had died and that that was why Rini had gone supernova.

"Well." Asanuma stopped nodding and patted Serena's head instead. "It's a good thing you sent the kids home, that conversation was definitely too gory for them. Now, Mikai swears he just heard Ami call him, and some communication thing she'd put in his ear melted, so we're trying to find her. Can either of you sense her anywhere?"

A long silence followed during which the air before Asanuma's eyes seemed to waver with the heat of Darien's gaze. The masked youth stared at him for a long time, then spun on his heel and stalked to the edge of the roof – then spun back, seizing Asanuma by his tunic.

"Didn't you hear what we just told you?" he said, fiercely. Angrily at first, but by the end of the sentence, despairingly.

"Of course I did." Asanuma pried his friend's fingers from his tunic. He kept his voice cool, even unconcerned. "But it's twenty years in the future, so there's not much use worrying about it now, is there?"

He ducked from beneath Mask's arm before his tunic could be grabbed again, and bounded to the rooftop ledge.

"Ami, on the other hand, needs our help right now in the _present_, so can we please keep that ninja promise we all made and try to find her?"

At that moment, the fire escape rattled. Asanuma shot over to it. "Motoki! Lita-chan!"

"Call me Lita-chan again and you'll be Asanuma-_chan_ by the time I'm through with you," came Lita's retorting voice. Her leg, as she pulled herself up over the roof ledge, swung toward his crotch. "C'mon, help me get him up."

"I don't think that's something you should be asking _me_ for help with," said Asanuma slyly as he reached down to grab Motoki's other arm. "He's _your_ boyfriend, after all…"

Lita aimed another kick at him, and Asanuma dodged, laughing madly.

He could feel Darien and Serena's eyes on his back. As he turned, with Motoki's left arm over his shoulder as he and Lita got him over the roof ledge, he shot Serena a look. He knew from the protesting, then reluctantly accepting expression that flashed across her face that she understood: she wouldn't tell Lita.

Next he glared at Darien, who took a deep breath before stalking forward to take Motoki from them.

"What happened?" asked Serena as she swiped some blood from Lita's cheek.

"Bead a youba," said Motoki thickly. He flicked a nervous look at Darien from above his swollen, bloody nose.

"Where's Mikai?" was all Darien said.

Motoki winced. "We god splid up."

"Split yourselves up, you mean," said Lita, who had waved off Darien's arm and swing herself up onto the roof. "Skin both their asses after you heal them, Shields."

Darien said nothing but looked grim as he crouched to begin fixing up Motoki's nose and other injuries.

"So," said Lita, pushing sweaty hair out of her face. "What was that white light?"

"Is that blood around your _mouth_, Lita?" said Asanuma with great interest. "What were you and Motoki doing, hmm – "

"Oh, shut up!" The brown-haired Senshi flushed and glared at him, swiping her mouth hastily with the back of her hand.

But she didn't say anything as Serena related to her the story that she had told Asanuma a few moments ago. This version didn't have any form of Asanuma, future or past, in it. Though she seemed unconsciously to sense something was missing from the story, for she was frowning slightly, she didn't say anything, still apparently too worried that Asanuma, who kept grinning like a Cheshire cat throughout the conversation, was going to make more fun of her.

By the end of the story, though, she was frowning fiercely and not even flicking him suspicious glanced anymore. "_Buji_?" she demanded. "That's – geeze, that doesn't even make sense! Why would the crystal choose a KID? Did Darien take his memory?"

"No," said Darien.

Lita raised her brows at him and looked at Serena.

"It's complicated," Serena said.

"How complicated can it be? He's eight years old, isn't he? You don't let eight year-olds get dragged into shit like this."

"Dunno where you've been for the past year, but nothing's ever that easy," said Asanuma, suddenly scornful. "Now come on, guys, we need to get moving. Who's going back to the party and who's going to look for Ami with me and Mikai?"

"We all have to go back," said Motoki, now speaking normally with a healed nose. "Or our parents are going to flip big time. The whole city saw Rini's explosion. I heard one of the police officers that passed us on the way there talking about the city being under an emergency curfew."

"I'm not going back," said Asanuma. "If anyone asks, you can just tell them I found some hot girl to neck with. Call me when everybody's finished reassuring Mummy and Daddy so we can do what we'd promised to do and find our friends."

He leapt away.

"What got stuck up HIS butt?" said Lita.

"Something's wrong," said Motoki.

"Probably Rei," Serena lied. "If something happened to Ami, it might have happened to Rei, too…" This, at least, was the truth, and she took a deep breath. Her parents were going to be worried sick, but – "I'm going to look for them, too."

"Your parents are going to flip," said Motoki wearily, rubbing his forehead.

"They're already flipping," said Serena. "If we go back now, they won't let us leave again."

"She's right," said Lita. "Best to just say that we got stuck somewhere and couldn't come back because of the curfew. Here, Toki, call them on your cell." To Serena and Darien, she said, "We'll take care of checking the park."

"I'll look around the shrine," said Serena. "We'll go over the ward again. We might be able to sense something that Mikai and Asanuma couldn't."

As Lita nodded and leaned over Motoki's shoulder to help him come up with a story to feed their families, Serena followed Darien to the roof's edge. She swallowed, feeling almost…scared? as she reached for him.

His head turned to look at her just before her fingers touched his sleeve. The thrashing in his eyes had become something weaker, like a wounded body crawling.

Her mind saw Asanuma again.

Her fingers clenched in the black fabric.

Then she let go, grabbing his hand instead. Her gloves still covered her hands, but she dug her fingers into his palm until she knew that he must feel her nails.

"Hey," she said. "I won't let you go wolfboy on me again."

Mask's face was as unreadable as it had been any of the first times she saw him, when she had been the only Senshi. But his head nodded the smallest centimeter forward – whether in acknowledgement or weakness, she didn't know.

All she knew was that she found herself lifting her fingers to his sharp, grim face.

"You're going to tell me what he said to you," she whispered.

For a split second, he leaned into her hand. Then, with a single jerked nod, he leapt away.

-

The curfew was both a good and a bad thing. The two children in their torn and burnt kimonos would have attracted no little amount of attention had people still filled the streets. Rini, lids heavy over her deadened eyes and stumbling with exhaustion, would especially have drawn the eyes and interference of any mother who set eyes on her.

But the curfew also got them caught by a police officer as they crossed an empty, food-littered street.

"Whoah!" he shouted when he saw them, speeding over on his motorcycle. "There's a curfew in effect! What are you two kids doing out? Where are your parents?"

Rini's eyes chose this moment to roll back in her head. She collapsed bonelessly to the sidewalk.

"Rini!" Buji shouted, dropping to grab her shoulders.

"Hang on, kid." The policeman nudged him aside and lifted Rini up. From his belt he took a small black device into which he said, "Mounted officer 23, requesting ambulance at 14th and Sakura."

An ambulance? Buji's shoulders hunched against the too-big black jacket hanging from his shoulders. The fabric brushed against the nubs on his back, as if he needed reminding that he had a bunch of spikes poking out of him. Spikes that EMTs would notice as soon as they did a preliminary check-up on him.

But it wasn't as though he could run and leave Rini alone with the police officer. Buji thought hard.

Then a blur of white and green landed in front of him.

"Officer," said a familiar voice.

Buji's eyes widened with relief so tremendous he thought he might explode. "Li – "

A hand slid over his mouth. Buji, eyes widening as he realized his near-mistake, looked up and saw Toki-nii-chan, in an outfit not unlike the one Asanuma had worn. Motoki cast him a reassuring look, then released his mouth.

"Sailor Jupiter," the police officer was saying. His eyes, too, were rather wide. "Uh…"

"We've come to tell you that the explosion at Azabu High School was from a youma attack," Jupiter said. "We're pretty sure the youma that caused it are gone now, but just in case, we want you to keep the curfew in place until we notify you otherwise."

"Well, um." The police officer blinked. "I'm not in charge of the curfew, I'd have to talk to – "

"Whoever it is, get in touch with them," Jupiter said, cutting him off. "Just make sure they know. I'll take this kid to the hospital so you can get on it."

Without waiting, she swept Rini from the officer's arms and leapt to the rooftops. Buji found himself following in Motoki's hold a second later.

"Whew," said Lita as they landed. "That was a close one."

"He wasn't going to let you take her," agreed Motoki, setting Buji down.

"I can respect him for that. I wouldn't let someone I didn't know take a little girl, even if it was a Senshi. But we didn't have much of a choice." She looked at Buji and flicked the hat from his head, revealing his horns. "Did we, ototou-chan?"

Buji shook his head. Relief still oozed from his pores, not just that Lita and Motoki had saved him from being discovered, but because Lita was Sailor Jupiter, and she'd seen what he was, and she was still treating him the same. He hadn't even realized that he had been afraid that she wouldn't until he felt relieved that she had.

"What happened to Rini?" said Lita now, stripping her glove off with her teeth and putting the back of her hand to Rini's forehead.

"She fainted. She used up nearly all her energy when the school exploded."

Buji wasn't entirely sure how he knew this, only that he remembered, vaguely, sitting up on a couch in the Furuhatas' house and knowing that Rini was almost empty, then, with slightly more clarity, a dream-like memory of flying, over the city with all its celebrating lights and lanterns, toward where he felt her. He remembered being thrown backward by something like a stormy wind, and fighting through it, muscles working furiously. Then she was falling, still so empty, her few last remaining drops of energy flying from her like tears flew from eyelashes.

Motoki and Lita exchanged glances. "Do you know what we should do?" Motoki asked Buji.

"No," said Buji, shaking his head. Then he stopped. "Well… she was okay in that place. With the white-haired man. Helios?"

Lita's nostrils were flaring. Even as Motoki turned to look at her, she was glaring at him. "No."

"Lita, she's unconscious. We can't just leave them here."

"I'll stay with them, and you go look for Ami, then."

"You can't do anything for her! If we don't fix what's wrong, she's not going to wake up – "

"I'll take her," said Buji. "To that place with the man. I think I can do it."

But Lita gave him the same look she had given Motoki. "No."

This annoyed Buji. Usually Lita treated him like a grown-up, the same way Motoki did, but now she was dismissing him like a little kid. Just like Darien had, deciding what he was and wasn't going to do without listening to Buji at all.

"I'm going to take her," he said, angrily this time. He looked at Motoki. "You have to tell Kaa-chan I'm okay, okay?"

"We already told her you and Rini were with us," said Motoki. He looked apprehensive now. "You're sure you know how to do it? How to get to Elysion?"

"Kind of."

And before Lita could stop him, Buji grabbed Rini's hand, concentrated on the feeling of the horns and spikes pushing out of his skin and on the memory of that land of flowers and blue sky.

He felt himself disappear.

Then he felt a blade of grass sticking up his nose. He blew it out, scrambling to his feet, and opening his eyes to see the cloudless blue sky and green valley.

His hand was still sweaty in Rini's cold one, but this sensation was eclipsed by another one.

The feeling of something sticking out of his back.

He twisted his head around and saw white, bat-like wings hanging behind them, shivering in time with his chattering teeth. His hand clamped tight around Rini's.

"I thought that you might be coming back."

Buji turned around wildly and saw the white-haired man with the horn crouching before him. Helios.

"M-my back – " he stammered.

"Dragon wings," said Helios. He was smiling very gently, not unlike Motoki. "Fear not, Buji. They are disappearing, you see?"

Buji turned his head around again and saw that the wings were folding against his back, not so much disappearing as being slurped slowly back into his shoulder blades through the holes that they had punched through Darien's jacket. He gritted his teeth against the sensation.

"I am most impressed," said Helios. "You came here all by yourself?"

Buji still had his shoulders hunched. "Rini fainted," he said. "She'll be better here, right?"

"Yes," said the white-haired man. "She will soon awaken, if I am not mistaken. The more time she spends here, the stronger she will be when you both return."

"Going back is something I don't know how to do by myself," said Buji nervously. "Helios-san."

"Helios," said the man. "Please call me only Helios. We are the same, both priests of Elysion. There is no need for honorifics." He paused. "And please do not worry yourself. Although it is true that returning from Elysion is more difficult than entering it, it is not impossible. I will teach you."

Buji hadn't thought of it when he had decided to bring Rini back to this place, but now he realized that being here, he would also be able to find out what all, exactly, had happened, and what he was, why it upset Darien-baka so much. The questions spilled out of him:

"Is this Elysion? Where is it? What are all these flowers for? What do priests of Elysion do? Why's Darien-baka so mad about it?"

Then another thought occurred to him, a very urgent one. He yanked off Asanuma's hat. "And how do I hide _these_?"

-

"What did they want?" Mikai asked when Asanuma caught up to him.

"Nothing," lied Asanuma. "Rini was the one who made that white light. I guess someone from the Black Moon nearly got her, and she went supernova on them. She's fine now – apparently, Buji is her Elysian priest, and he helped her." He changed the subject. "Did you find anything?"

Mikai regarded Asanuma intently as he assimilated all this, then shook his head. "No. I can't sense her at all. I've been through nearly all of Juuban and Azabu. But I'm crap at sensing auras, so I might have missed her."

"Darien and Serena won't, if she's here," said Asanuma. "They're going to look. And we'll keep looking." Normally, this would have felt ridiculous. He was_ comforting_ _Mikai_, for God's sake. But he didn't feel annoyed or incredulous. Only very tired.

And grateful, maybe, that Mikai hadn't noticed that anything was up, despite Asanuma's clenched fists and white lips. Maybe he was only ignoring it, aware that there was something Asanuma didn't want to share, but Asanuma doubted it. Mikai's straight-ahead stare reminded him of his own single-mindedness when he thought he had a whiff of Rei's trail.

It wasn't fair.

_'Hey, Rei? Wow, I'm really glad we finally found you. You know, I've been looking for you for almost a year now because, well, I wanted to tell you that I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you. And, oh, yeah, I die about twenty years in the future, but that's not a big deal, right?'_

Asanuma swallowed. "Hey, I'll go check Odaibatown, alright?"

Without waiting for an answer, he veered off to the west, toward the twinkling lights of the Rainbow Bridge.

-

It was not unheard of for power blasts to ripple through space. Few beings were powerful enough for the aura of their attacks – no matter how strong – to radiate further than a planet's atmosphere. And even for those few, auras rarely extended beyond several planets; they were distorted by gravity wells or dissipated before reaching any further.

Lanai was midway through the Andomreda galaxy when the white power washed over her. Weakened by distance, like a wave that could lap no higher than her ankles, but still substantial enough to slap Lanai with the fury and agony of its creator.

It was not hard to guess to whom this aura must belong.

Her wings flattened to her back as she drew on aura from her life-force to bullet herself ahead.

She was nearly out of time.

-

It had been a long time since Mikai's juvie days, but the art of lockpicking was a lot like riding a bike: you didn't forget how to do it. The hardest part of getting into the Mizuno apartment would have been getting his pierced and dyed self past the doorman in the lobby. But he didn't even have to worry about that because the doorman took one look at Mikai's Shittenou armor, asked him if he had business inside, and let him right in.

He had hacked into the apartment building's server long ago – only a few days after he first met Mercury – to find the number of Ami Mizuno's apartment, so that part was easy, too.

In fact, everything was easy, from glancing through the impersonal, spotless rooms of the spacious apartment and seeing that no one was there, to barging into the Minato Hospital emergency room where Dr. Marie Mizuno was working and shoving past the triage nurses to the room where Mizuno was leaning over a chart.

That was where the easiness ended. She looked up at him with eyes that were more like Mercury's icy chips than Ami's dark, mournful ones, and said, "Do you know how many bacteria you probably just tracked into this room?"

Mikai gave the semi-conscious middle-aged woman sitting on the bed with an oxygen mask over her face an apologetic look. "I'm very sorry, ma'am." To Dr. Mizuno, he said, "I'd like to speak with you outside."

"I would like to finish filling out this patient's chart," said Mizuno. "Guess who's going to get what they'd like?"

Mikai smiled. He took a step forward and put a hand on the clipboard in Mizuno's hand. "Let's be adults here. I am going to speak to you about your daughter. I can do that outside, peacefully and quietly in the hallway, or I can do it here, in front of your patient, who might be a little disillusioned about your capability to care for her after hearing how you treated your own daughter." His smile widened. "The choice is yours."

Mizuno's nostrils were flared with fury as she looked at him. She set down the clipboard at the foot of the woman's bed, pressed the 'call nurse' button beside the woman's elbow, and clicked out of the room in her heels.

When Mikai followed her, she turned around. "Who the hell are you?"

"Your worst enemy," said Mikai, very pleased to be able to use this line. How very superhero-ish he felt.

Mizuno was about as impressed by it as Mercury would have been, though: her nostrils flared even wider, her lips compressing more tightly.

So Mikai spread his arms, letting her take in the armor. "Come on, an intelligent woman like yourself must watch the news. You have to know what I am."

"What you are, but not who you are," said Mizuno coldly. "I would like to know who you are so that I can have you sued within an inch of your life for approaching me like this."

"Tell me what I want to know, Doc, and I'll be out of your hair," Mikai said. "When was the last time you saw Ami?"

She let out a disgusted sound and turned away from him, as though to walk back to the nurses' station. He made a warning sound. She looked back at him, eyes like sharp blades behind her chunky black glasses.

"If you knew how to read, you would be able to read a newspaper and know that I haven't seen my daughter since early May."

"And you haven't noticed anything in her room at home, nothing disturbed, no noises?"

"What _are_ you?" Mizuno said. "Shouldn't you be out doing something useful like killing youma?"

Mikai wanted to jam his thumbs into the pulse throbbing in the woman's throats. Jam it until his thumbnails poked out on the other side. It took a fucking lot to keep his voice light. "One gets the feeling you don't care if your daughter's found or not."

"That's none of your business. Get out."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I _will _call security."

Mikai moved his fingers. The ground beneath Mizuno jumped. She stumbled, her elbows thumping back against the wall, her glasses tumbling from her face. She blinked up at him.

"What you _will_ do is call me if she comes back." He enclosed a slim cell phone in her slack fingers. "Or if you think you hear something in the middle of the night. Or if even one paper in her bedroom moves. You _will_ call me."

He patted her icy fingers companionably, smiled, and made a motion with his hand. The hospital floor smoothed again, though a crack marked the linoleum.

Still smiling, he walked toward the exit. "Happy New Year's, Dr. Mizuno."

-

By daybreak, which was cloudy and promised thunderstorms, the Senshi and Shittenou had scoured not only Minato Ward but Shibuya, Shinjuku, Chiyoda, and Chuo as well. Moon had gone through all of Minato Ward street by street, for she was the one most likely to recognize Ami's aura. Jupiter, Motoki, Asanuma, and Mikai had each taken a ward to search in grid patterns. Mask had gone to the top of the Rainbow Bridge and gone into a near trance-like state like the one he had used months ago to search for the Shittenou, reaching through roots and rivers and air streams to find the aura he faintly remembered.

Moon had seized the rope nearly as soon as they had parted on the rooftop, and not for one second of his trance had she let it go. It had distracted both of them from their searches, for as long as each other's auras were so close in their minds, they formed a haze that might have stopped them from glimpsing Ami's aura. But through the rope, Darien could sense that Serena would rather miss Ami than risk letting Darien go, and although he did not want her to know, sensing that from her made him want to bury his face in her shoulder and tell her, let her promise him that everything would be fine, and she would stay with him forever and not let it happen.

He would not let himself do that. But he let himself huddle in her worry for him, pulling it close like a coat, and did not fight her grip on the rope.

In neither Minato nor any of the other wards did any of them sense Ami. By the time a chilly drizzle began to fall at nine o'clock, they all wore the signs of exhaustion: fuku and tunics rumpled, eyes dull and bruised, limbs trembling with fatigue. Only Mikai and Asanuma's feverish eyes were still clear.

But the two Shittenou agreed to halt the search for now in favor of taking a rest. This surprised everyone, even the deeply distracted Darien, but no one wanted to make them rethink it.

Jupiter headed for the police station to tell the authorities that the curfew could be lifted. Mikai claimed to head home for some shut-eye, but the hard curve of his brow said otherwise; it was a look that Darien knew he got when he had an idea that required research.

This left Motoki, Asanuma, Moon, and Mask to retrieve Buji and Rini, who, Motoki had told them a few hours earlier, had returned to Elysion. The news had made Darien's face tighten when he heard it, but he had not gone immediately to Elysion to take Buji out of it.

Now, he disappeared alone to Elysion and reappeared a moment later with Rini and Buji in tow. Rini was conscious, although she was still so wan that she barely seemed aware of her surroundings. She stared vaguely ahead until Sailor Moon knelt in front of her, lifting her hands tentatively.

Rini's only reply to Moon's unspoken question was to step forward into her waiting arms, where she fell almost immediately back to sleep.

"Helios said she'll probably sleep for _hours_," Buji was telling them now. "He gave me this potion he made, see, to speed up her aura absorption. He said he would've given it to you if you hadn't up and left so fast." He was speaking now to Darien, who was staring at him.

"The horns are gone," said the black-haired man in an unreadable voice.

"Yeah, Helios taught me how to make a glamour for them," said Buji in the same excited voice. His face screwed up for a second, and the horns reappeared, peeking through his hair. He grinned, and they disappeared again. "He would've told you how to do it, but you – "

" – left before he could say anything." At another time, Darien might have rolled his eyes at this, but after what the Asanuma from the future had told him, it only felt like another nail in the coffin. He hadn't changed, despite his vow to himself.

He would never change.

On the road below the rooftop on which the adolescents had gathered, people began to stream hesitantly out of the buildings. The end to the curfew must have been announced.

Motoki took out his cell to call his parents so that they would know he was coming home. He walked a few meters away from his friends, but they could still hear his father's bellowing through the phone. Asanuma, Buji, and Serena winced as Furuhata-san swore to tie Motoki to the kitchen sink and make him wash dishes for the rest of his life for leaving the house during a BLEEPing youma attack and scaring the BLEEP out of him and his mother. They all breathed a collective sigh of relief that Furuhata-san was not _their_ parent.

Then came Serena's phone call to her parents, and everyone felt that having Furuhata-san as a parent was quite preferable to having Kenji and Ikuko Tsukino as parents.

"Well, looks like you two better get home posthaste if you want to keep all your limbs," said Asanuma, flashing a grin. "Maybe if you go with Serena, her mom'll soften up and only lock Serena in her room for thirty years instead of fifty, Dare. C'mon, Buji, I'll take you home."

Buji raised a Darien-like eyebrow. "You sure? My mom doesn't yell like Serena's, but she cries."

"I can take tears," said Asanuma with great confidence, and swept the boy along in his wake by seizing him by the shoulder.

Buji trotted along, throwing only one last look over his shoulder at Rini's limp body in Serena's arms.

The boy was uncharacteristically silent as they strode down the rather crowded streets. Many people were heading toward the destroyed high school to gawk at the wreckage, and he could hear the phweets of police whistles in the distance as they tried to push people back. They faded into the distance, though, and he drew himself out of his thoughts.

And realized that Asanuma had led them to the park, which was dark and deserted.

Buji looked up and said in his blunt way, "Is there something you wanna talk about?"

"Yup." Asanuma glanced down at him, turning down the main pathway. "So. You're Rini's Elysian priest."

"_An_ Elysian priest," Buji corrected.

Asanuma didn't say anything for a minute. Then, "You seemed pretty excited, before, talking about all the stuff Helios taught you."

"Yup."

"You're definitely doing it, then?"

Buji looked up at him. Then he too turned his head to look straight ahead as they walked. "I'm not going to let what happened to my dad happen to Kaa-chan or my sister."

"Darien won't let Helios train you to fight."

"I know."

"If you make me a promise, I will."

Buji's hands were pushed into his pockets so hard that they hurt. "I already know what you want me to promise. You want me to protect her. So someone's there to keep her safe when you die."

Asanuma didn't say anything.

"I was going to anyways," Buji said. "I'm supposed to."

"Yeah. I know. But 'supposed to' isn't a very strong word. Or two words. It's easy to not to what you're supposed to do. I was _supposed_ to do my homework. I didn't." He looked down at Buji. "So I'm looking for more a you'll-hate-yourself-for-breaking-a-promise-to-a-dead-man type deal. I figure that kind of guilt'll work better than 'supposed to'. Are you in?"

Buji tried one last time. "It's twenty years away, I thought. It can change."

Asanuma flashed him a close-eyed grin. "Yeah, but I'll be a dead man after Darien finds out I'm training you."

Buji forced a laugh. It didn't last long. He dig his chin deeper into his jacket and said, "Okay. I promise."

-

Darien did not accompany Serena and Rini into the house. He disappeared to Elysion after accompanying she and Rini to her block, and Serena could only shoot him a look before he left and hope that he would come and tell her what the future Asanuma had said that had so shaken him.

Ikuko and Kenji were waiting on the front porch, still in their party clothes, shivering in the gloom. When they saw Serena appear, pushing open the front gate, they both let out exclamations and ran forward.

"You – " Ikuko's voice was tight, and for a second, Serena thought her mother was going to hit her. But she seized her, wrapping her arms around Serena and Rini, almost as Serena had done to Asanuma hours ago, and Kenji enclosed all three of them.

"How could you?" Ikuko was hiccuping, almost unintelligibly. "We didn't know where you were – and both of you gone – didn't even _tell_ me – you could have _died_…"

At last she pulled back, her wet eyes flashing. "What were you _thinking_, Serena Tsukino? I know I raised you better than to go running off in the street in the middle of the night, no matter how upset Asanuma was! And to take _Rini _with you – I should spank you, young lady!"

Belatedly, Serena realized that Motoki and Lita's made-up story must have somehow explained them all leaving because Asanuma was upset. It made sense, considering he hadn't been at the party, so everyone would accept the explanation easily enough. But the made-up explanation was so close to the real one that hearing it felt like a punch in the gut.

Serena tried to smile reassuringly. "I know, Mom. I know," she heard herself say over and over. "I won't do it again, none of us will – "

"No, you won't!" agreed Ikuko fiercely. "And neither will Rini, let me have her – "

"NO!"

Ikuko and Kenji flinched.

"I mean – " Serena tried to smile at them again, but all the energy that should have gone toward curving her lips seemed instead to be going into pulling Rini closer to her, clutching her tighter. "She's really tired. I need to take her to bed."

"Yes," said Ikuko, "but first she needs to know that what you two did was wrong, punishments don't work if they're delayed – "

"She _didn't_ do anything wrong!" Serena's eyes flashed. "_I_ did. And you can yell at me as much as you want, but first I'm putting her to bed."

She pushed past them and into the house, breathing hard.

Ikuko moved after them, but Kenji caught her arm.

"Let it go for now, sweetheart," he said, his eyes following Serena up the stairs. There was something in her face just then that had reminded him very much of Ikuko herself. "We'll talk to them after they've both had some rest."

To Serena's dismay, Rini began to stir in her arms as she hurried up the stairs.

"Shhh…" Serena soothed, pressing her hand to the girl's head so that it would not loll as she stepped. "I'm just tucking you in…keep sleeping, it's okay…"

But Rini made a sound as Serena laid her down on the bed, and her exhaustion-circled eyes drifted halfway open.

"Hey," said Serena softly, pushing Rini's bangs back from her cold face. "Go back to sleep, sweetheart. You're safe. I'll be right here."

"No…" Rini's wet eyelashes trembled. "…I don't want to…"

"Shhh…" Serena held her hand. "You don't have to dream if you don't want to. You can go to Elysion. Do you want Darien to come take you?"

Rini inhaled and shook her head, her fingers tightening convulsively around Serena's.

"Rini, sweetheart, what's wrong?"

"I controlled him," the little girl breathed. Her dark eyes were all the way open now, wide and scared.

Serena didn't say anything. She kept stroking Rini's bangs back from her face.

"I shouldn't be able to do that," Rini whispered. "I did it to Buji, too. And Asanuma. In the future." A sound escaped her. "Serena, I don't want to do that anymore…"

Serena laid down next to Rini and pulled her into her arms. Rini huddled under her shoulder, forehead pressed to her collarbone.

She whispered, so inaudibly that Serena could barely hear her, "What if Asanuma came here and died because I controlled him?"

Serena's answer was swift and fierce. "Asanuma came here because he loved you." She pulled back to stare Rini in the eye. "Just like Darien and I did."

Rini looked away and didn't say anything.

Serena tightened her arms around the little girl. "Rini. Listen. Someone – someone I met before you, she trained me to use my power because she said I was too weak to protect the people I needed to keep safe. I think, if it's important to teach people who are weak to use their powers, it's even more important to teach people who are strong to use theirs."

Serena leaned away from Rini to look down at her. "Can we start teaching you?"

Rini looked into her eyes for a minute before burrowing her head under Serena's chin again.

Then, against Serena's pulse, she nodded.

-

It felt exceedingly strange to come to Serena's window in broad daylight, especially on top of the disorientation he already felt from having gone for nearly thirty hours without sleep. Darien ignored the feeling of strangeness as best as he could – ignored everything as best as he could – and crawled across the branch that extended to Serena's window. It was, as usual, unlocked, and uncurtained. He could see a faint shape on the bed through the faintly frost-rimed glass.

She had already fallen asleep? Then he could leave… could escape without telling her…

But his body didn't move.

Except, after a moment, to push the window open and creep onto the windowseat.

No, Serena wasn't awake. He sensed her sense him through the rope, and an instant later, she sat up slowly on the bed, carefully disentangling her arms from around something there: Rini.

"She's okay," she said in response to the question that he had wanted, but not felt that he had the right, to ask. "She will be." She looked up at him, face determined. "We _all_ will be. So get rid of those fangs."

Darien's hand lifted to his mouth. He had managed to keep the other facets of the transformation down, pushing the claws back into his nails, forcing the snout back into his nose, and squeezing his eyes shut until they turned back to normal – or as normal as they ever got – but too much fear still howled inside him to make his elongated canines back to their usual length.

"I'm trying," he muttered. Speaking through them was strange, as though he wore a set of plastic vampire teeth for Halloween. They pressed against his lip, nearly cutting.

"I was joking." Serena stood up and came to stand in front of him. "Kind of." She still wore her torn, dust-spotted kimono.

She touched a hand to his jaw, the other to the rope, and he felt that familiar sensation of small teeth, human teeth, and his canines slid slowly back into his gums, human-sized again.

But all the turmoil was left intact.

He had failed to change. Despite how determined he had been.

Serena sat on the windowseat beside him. She lifted his arm. She put it over her shoulders and put her own arms around his waist, hugging tightly.

At another moment, he would have said nothing, pleased and hoping that she wouldn't remember her supposed duty to the princess and pull away from him.

But today, he could only think, what if this – him letting her do this, encouraging her affection for him when he knew that later she would torture herself for what she saw as betraying the princess – was one of the things that shaped him into the person who allied with Chaos?

Even if he couldn't change himself, if he would go to Chaos anyway, the thought was too unbearable.

So he tried to slide his arm from around her shoulders and said wearily, "Serena, what about the princess and your hyperactive imagination?"

She held onto his hand, keeping his arm pinned around her shoulders. "The princess wouldn't deserve you if she denied you human contact right now." Her warm breath was hitting his cold fingertips. "And I wouldn't deserve to call myself your friend if I didn't give you one."

God. All this chaos roiling inside him, but Serena could just _say_ something, and it receded, like the Red Sea before Moses. This power of hers was exactly why he had thought that he could change the future Helios had prophecized. He had been sure that Serena would keep him from spinning so out of control that he would go to Chaos.

"What did he say to you?"

Darien's arm tightened around her.

"Darien. You can't not tell me."

From a strategic standpoint, he needed to tell her. If what Helios and prophesized and the future Asanuma had told him did come true, he would be better dealt with if someone was on their guard for it to happen. Perhaps it could even be nipped in the bud. Rini was powerful enough to stop him, today's exhibition in Elysion had shown that. If Serena was aware and Rini was capable, they could deal with it, with him –

"What?" Serena was leaning away from him now, her mouth and eyes wide. She stared at him, her head shaking unconsciously back and forth. "No. What are you thinking?"

With her still holding the rope and with their proximity to each other, she must have seen the scenes that were flashing through his mind: images of him with red eyes like Kisenian Blossom's, shifting and transforming endlessly before Rini, her eyes glowing white as they had in Elysion, froze him and approached –

"Why are you picturing that?" Serena shook her head and tensely laughed, as though to convince them both that this was a joke. "Stop it with the hyperactive imagination, Darien, you're not a teenage girl – "

Darien pulled his hand from out of her clammy one and closed both of his hands around the rope. He closed his eyes and submerged himself in two memories.

The first was of Elysion, of her head soft and heavy in his arms and Helios' voice trembling in his ears. _"This wind foretold that the Terran prince welcomes Chaos…and becomes one of its warriors."_

The second was of Asanuma's bloodied mouth gasping up at him as blue fire burned around them. _"Your future self…coming to…get Rini…for Chaos."_

-

Serena stared at Darien. A thousand denials swirled through her.

None, she knew, as his feelings radiated through her from the rope, that he himself had not already thought of.

None that he himself had not already dismissed.

But she had something that he had abandoned, the second Asanuma died clutching his cape.

Hope. Hope that the future could change.

That they could change it.

Serena took his hands and threaded her fingers deliberately into his, squeezing tightly. Then she said four words that helped him more than any logical argument could have.

"I won't let you."

-

-

A/N: I've rewritten this chapter at least ten times. Please tell me what helped you understand, what made the story more confusing, and any scenes that stood out to you. _Please._


	28. Chapter 28

A/N: Only three or four chapters left for this season! That's why this chapter took so long; I've been writing the last chapters.

To answer a reviewer's question, the idea of Elysian priests taking either a unicorn, dragon, or phoenix form does not come from canon. I just couldn't picture Buji as a unicorn, and then my Harry Potter obsession took over.

Another reviewer, a long time ago, asked what Darien's voice sounds like when I imagine STC's scenes. I have discovered an answer: Tomokazu Seki, the seiyu for Van in _Escaflowne_, Toya in _Cardcaptor Sakura_ and Sousuke Sagara in _Full Metal Panic!_ sounds extremely like the voice I imagine for Darien.

Next chapter will have a timeline.

Thanks as always to Jade-Eye, the best friend ever! You're still young, Jade!

Disclaimer: I don't own Sailor Moon or SmartBoards.

-

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Infinity

-

Sailor Pluto staggered back into the time plane. Blood-red lightning flashed around her as she dug her staff into the mirror-littered sand, trying to stay upright.

She needed to act quickly. Mercury had escaped her… Mars had escaped Uranus with the Tomoe girl…

Pain roiled in her abdomen, sloshing her concentration. It was difficult even to picture Mercury, much less remember what she had done…or what Pluto needed to prevent her from doing…

_"Pluto._"

Dismayed, disappointed faces…disgust tightening them…blue eyes melting into silver ones, filling with tears…

_"What have you done?"_

"I didn't know. I didn't know!" How could she have known when that High Senshi approached her what would happen? She only knew what she saw in her mirrors and what she saw of the queen when Her Majesty came to the time plane so that she could weep without being seen by her court or her daughter.

Pluto had only wanted to help. The High Senshi had told her it would help!

_"Queen Selenity, don't die. I only wanted to save you! Don't die!"_

She sucked in a breath. It rattled and sobbed, wet in her throat. Something red and glistening spattered from her mouth to the gray sand.

When the Fountain of the Past had begun to leak, so had she.

She had broken so many laws.

_"What have you done?"_

There was no way to change it, now. No way to take back the Time Key that she had given the High Senshi. _This_ was the only way she could fix the mistakes she'd made and erase the second past her mistake had created.

She had to do it before Chronos' punishment killed her.

_"I'll make it right! I swear! I'll bring her back, she'll get another chance to live, no matter what it takes – Queen! _Queen_!"_

She had to keep herself alive long enough to keep her promise.

When the princess was resurrected, she would go to her death. Only then.

For now, Pluto sank, unconscious, to the sands of time.

-

Darien had fallen asleep before Serena. It made her feel quite nice, like she was the one taking care of him instead of the other way around. She whispered words to him as he murmured troubled things in his sleep, and brushed her hands through his hair over and over as his head lolled to her updrawn knees beside him. She felt déjà vu, remembering the time that he had fallen asleep when she snuck invisibly into his hospital room after the Spring Fling, and the memory would have brought her a feeling of complete contentment had she not wished to reach out to Rini and drew her head onto her lap, too, for somehow she belonged there as well…

But on this thought, Serena must have drifted into sleep, for the next thing she knew, her face was in her pillow, and she could hear someone knocking on her door.

She blinked, glancing at her empty window seat as the leaves on the branch outside danced in a sudden wind, and rolled onto her back.

Her mother's faint orchid perfume wisped into the room, and a weight settled itself on the side of the bed. Serena blinked up at her, reaching up to rub her eyes as Ikuko's hand pushed back her bangs.

"Good morning, sweetheart. How do you feel?"

"Okay," Serena yawned. Memories of the day before filtered slowly into her, as did the warmth of Rini's body, curled up against her side. She gazed unfocusedly up at her mother's worried face for a moment, letting it all sink in, before she blinked and focused on her.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," she said immediately. "I know how scared you must have felt."

Ikuko pushed Serena's bangs back again and squeezed her hand tightly, kissing her forehead. "I know you do," she said softly, her eyes sliding for a moment to Rini before they returned to meet Serena's. "And that is the _only_ reason I'm not grounding you for the rest of your life."

She shook her head then, her fierce expression melting into a sad smile. She squeezed Serena's hand again. "Oh, when did my baby girl get to be so grown-up?"

Serena mustered a smile. She didn't feel grown-up. She felt small and scared; she wanted to stay here forever, with her mom stroking her hair and making her feel like anything bad that had happened was just a dream.

But the warmth beside her was Rini, not a teddy bear. And she knew from only a few hours ago that being able to reassure someone was an exponentially better feeling than being reassured.

Ikuko was fingering something near Serena's waist. Sitting up, Serena looked down at it and saw that it was a spot of charred fabric on her kimono. She had fallen asleep without changing out of it.

Serena opened her mouth to make an excuse – lie that they had walked through a bunch of firecrackers, or something – but Ikuko looked at her. "Serena, don't."

Serena's lips closed.

"I know you must have been caught in one of the youma attacks. There's no other explanation for you two looking like battle survivors and for Rini to still be sleeping like the dead."

Ikuko paused and sighed. "I appreciate that you didn't want to worry me by telling me. And really, I'd rather not know the details. It would just make me more paranoid than ever about letting you out of the house again. But I need to know, is Rini okay? Do we need to take her to the hospital?"

"Sailor Jupiter said she'd be fine," lied Serena. "They got the youma before it did too much to everyone. She said Rini would probably just sleep a lot for a while."

Ikuko accepted Serena's semi-falsehood with a nod. "Okay. So we'll just let her have some peace and quiet."

She leaned forward, fussing with the blanket and pulling it up to Rini's chin. "Does she have any stuffed animals she likes to sleep with?"

"No," said Serena, a little sadly. Rini looked very lonely, so pale and wan alone in Serena's bed without even a teddy bear to watch over her.

A thought occurred to her. She pulled the giant stuffed Sailor Moon doll that Uncle Mori had gotten her for her birthday out of her closet and tucked it in next to Rini.

Ikuko wrapped an arm around Serena and led her out of the room. "Let's go downstairs and get you some breakfast. Should we call Lita, too? I bet she could use a bit of mothering, and after worrying about you all day yesterday, I've got more than enough for both of you."

Serena smiled and went to call Lita. After Lita hung up with the promise to be over soon, Serena hesitated – then dialed a different number.

-

Of all of the Four Sisters, Bertie had been Emerald's least favorite. Always, behind the little child's and then the woman's eyes, Emerald had seen thoughts that raced like lightning, a mind that, she feared, far outstripped her own. The other Sisters Emerald could easily surpass in beauty and power, but this sister with her scheming and wit, Emerald could not hope to match.

For this reason, the first place that Emerald went after she stopped vomiting from the sight of Rubeus' and the sisters' executions was Bertie's set of chambers.

Walking in was like entering a geode crystal, except the crystal was melting ice. The chambers had nowhere to sleep, hardly even anywhere to sit. Instead, endless spires covered every free centimeter: rising from the floor, jutting from the walls, hanging from the ceiling.

These icicles were data receptacles. Bertie had modified the system of using crystals for data storage so that she could store data in ice instead – doubtless so that if she died, as she had the previous night, Emerald would not be able to access her data.

Bertie's caginess only convinced Emerald that the Wiseman was right: Rubeus and the sisters had been traitors. They must have been planning something against the prince. Why else would Bertie want to hide her data so that others in the Black Moon couldn't access it?

Logically, it followed that if Rubeus and the Sisters had been traitors allied with the Shittenou and Senshi, Bertie's data would hold some information that would help Emerald. The Shittenou and Senshi's hiding spots, their civilian identities, _something._

Emerald just had to find it before the data melted away. She blinked away the drop of icy water that dripped into her eyes from the stalagmite above her and began to search.

She began with the shortest icicles, which were the ones that had probably been most recently used and thus began to melt the fastest after Bertie's death. Bertie would almost certainly have gone through them, hoping to find something in her store of data that could save Rubeus and her sisters. Only bringing the princess to Prince Diamond would have saved them, and so it was here that would Emerald should find what she needed.

Two hours later, Emerald pushed away from the icicles.

The sister's data had been a mess of diagrams and equations, abrupt footage of a white-haired man in a lab coat, and aura readings from a building. From what Emerald could discern, Bertie had been experimenting with the transformation of humans to youma. The initial equations were written in an absolutely spotless, angular print that Emerald recognized as Sapphire's, but the latest equations, with coefficients scrambled out multiple times and rewritten, were in Bertie's less neat scrawl. They were accompanied by holographs of delicate ice sculptures of seven-stranded helixes that were already beginning to melt and static as they were projected from Emerald's crystal reader. The reader's circuitry began to spark, and she hurriedly removed the icicle after copying as much of its contents as possible to her reader's hard drive.

The most recent icicle, according to the date in the file's corner, had the footage of the white-haired man again, a newspaper clipping, holographs of what looked to be a very humanoid youma, its body burned, and a note, hastily scrawled: _crystal-catalyzed synthesis, needs to be redirected to development_.

Emerald put this crystal down, for it had begun to melt even more quickly than the others.

Bertie had thought that this information about transforming humans to youma was important. Emerald had to admit that it would be extremely helpful, especially for someone of limited power like herself, to have a ready supply of potential youma present wherever she went. How delicious, too, to be able to snap one's fingers and have those Senshi and Shittenou leapt upon by the very people they were trying to save. It was such a scintillating prospect that it was almost arousing, really. Emerald stroked her thigh, thinking.

She didn't understand well enough the method that Bertie had used – to which crystal had she referred? The dark crystals that powered the mother ship? Their crystal earrings? One of the Great Crystals? But clearly this scientist man had some idea, if Bertie had been interested enough in his experimentation to record it.

Emerald's fingers stilled on her leg. She rose, summoned a portal, and stepped through it.

-

Darien was on his balcony, wrapped in his blanket with a mug of coffee, submerged deep into his senses once more to search for Ami, when Serena called and asked him to come get Rini.

"Helios said she'll recover faster in Elysion. My parents are going to insist we take her to the hospital if she keeps looking so pale."

"She doesn't want to see me."

It was a statement of fact. Darien knew that if he was Rini – and they were remarkably, unsettlingly similar in temperament – he would not want to wake up from an energy-drained stupor with the man who hadn't saved Asanuma.

"You came, Darien," was Serena's quiet reply. "Even if Asanuma died, that means something to her."

Yes, because his future self hadn't come. Or wouldn't come. Fright tried to rear up in Darien at this, like Endymion trying to take over, but it was weighed down back into the depths by a tremendous weariness.

"Alright," he said.

That was how Darien found himself stealing into Serena's bedroom in broad daylight for the second time in twenty-four hours.

A smile touched his face as he saw the giant Sailor Moon doll tucked with Rini beneath Serena's beloved moons-and-stars blanket. She was still tremendously pale, her eyes motionless behind dark lids. He touched fingertips to her cold forehead instead of just picking her up and taking her physically to Elysion. So long as he only took Rini's mind or soul or whatever it was that went to Elysion without the body, Serena's parents would still see Rini sleeping if they checked the room and would not be alarmed.

As soon as Darien set Rini down among the dream-flowers in Elysion, the pollen-like motes of golden energy from before began to stream toward her. They moved slowly and softly, dream-like.

Darien watched them, thinking.

Never would it have occurred to him to contemplate a situation in which he would have to choose between saving Asanuma and saving Rini. But as he thought now, about what he would have said if someone ever had set such a hypothetical scenario before him, he realized that he would have answered that he would probably choose Asanuma.

He would have known that he should choose to save Rini – if only for the reasons that he was six years old, helpless, and his daughter, while Asanuma was as grown-up as any of the rest of them. He would have been aware of that but also aware that, despite all those noble reasons, he would have chosen to save Asanuma anyways, because Asanuma was a friend he couldn't even begin to think of living without.

He was still numb with disbelief that he had saved Rini instead.

Why had he saved Rini? Confusion and what tasted like regret swirled through him, dampening the numbness. Why, when he owed so much more to Asanuma, had he let him die?

If he regretted not saving Asanuma, why did he still relieved that he had saved Rini?

"It's hard to love someone," he had vaguely heard Serena murmuring to him as he drifted between sleep and wakefulness. "You can say that you love them so much that you want to protect them from everything, but if you really love them…you have to protect what they want to protect. Even if it gets in the way of you protecting them."

He had thought then, in his semi-consciousness that she was speaking of him, and her, and the moon princess, but now he wondered if she hadn't meant him, Asanuma, and Rini.

The Asanuma from the future had wanted to save Rini.

Darien had saved Rini.

Darien had wanted to save Asanuma.

_If a is the same as b, and b is the same as c, then a and c are the same._ That was the transitive property, expostulated on page 23 of his geometry book in middle school. By its logic, by saving Rini, he had saved Asanuma. The simple algebraic concept explained his inexplicable actions.

No, it didn't.

Serena was right.

But he hadn't saved Rini for Asanuma.

He hadn't been thinking of what Asanuma wanted at all when he had saved Rini.

"How fares Hime-sama?"

Darien glanced up. Helios was landing softly on the ground before him.

He looked back at Rini, at the color slowly returning to her face as the golden motes funneled into her inhalations. "Better, I think. How long would she need to stay here to be back to normal outside Elysion?"

Helios knelt, sitting on his legs. "There is no real way of knowing. How long she takes to recover depends on the size of her power reserves. The larger they are, the more time it will take for her to recover the aura that has been depleted from them. Has she taken the potion that I gave to Buji for her?"

Darien nodded, still watching Rini.

"Buji told me what happened. I would think that her power reserves must be very large to have caused such a shockwave. The winds were restless with it before you arrived."

He paused. "I know you dislike my advising you, Darien-sama, but I must warn you to be very careful now. Such a tremendous power release may have traveled outside the system. Powerful beings may come, eager to possess it for themselves."

Powerful beings. _Like my future self?_ Darien could not help but wonder. His thoughts were turning slowly, like a weary horse, from trying to understand his feelings for Rini to the less threatening realm of strategy, trying to reason out what had and would happen.

If Rini was his daughter, why would his future self have to chase her to get to her? Why couldn't she come immediately to him or him to her?

But perhaps his future self was the reason that she had lived with Asanuma. Perhaps Darien was already allied with Chaos when she was born, and Asanuma had sought to keep her safe from him and Chaos?

Yet Rini had said that her parents were fighting Chaos.

Would Asanuma have lied, telling her that because he didn't want her to know that her father was allied with Chaos? No child should have to know that…

Darien's mind sped to the morbid visualizations that Serena had seen in his mind, of Rini killing him.

…unless it was absolutely necessary.

"Helios," Darien heard himself say. "Have you heard any more about me allying with Chaos?"

Helios shifted. "Bits and pieces…all very vague."

"The Asanuma from the future used up the last of his life-force to tell me that my future self was coming to get Rini for Chaos."

Helios absorbed this silently.

Darien's eyes stayed on Rini. "I decided at Christmas that when we found the princess, I would tell her that I wouldn't be with her because I love Serena."

Helios said nothing.

"But Rini's still here. In terms of time travel…when I decided not to be with the princess, Rini should have ceased to exist because the future would have changed. She should have disappeared already."

Helios nodded slowly.

"But she's still here. Which means that I still…somehow…" Darien exhaled. "…will be with the princess."

His eyes traced Rini's sharp ones for another half-moment, then lifted to Helios's pale irises.

"I'm trying to think of reasons why that would happen. And it strikes me that if I turn to Chaos, maybe the only person who would be powerful enough to stop me would be someone with the Silver _and_ Golden Crystals' powers."

Helios did not gasp or refute these words, or even look surprised. He inclined his head, his expression apologetic. "It is a valid explanation. Alliances between powerful monarchs are often made for the sole purpose of producing a powerful heir."

Darien bit his lip. Bit down harder. Dug his knuckles into his knees.

"…rena." A mumble came from beside him.

He looked down and saw Rini curling onto her side, her eyelids slowly parting. Her little hand was fisted in the fabric of his jacket.

She stared at her hand blankly, drowsiness filtering away from her face. Then her eyes rose to meet Darien's, and suspicion, like a second set of lids, slid over her eyes.

She sat up. "Where's Serena?"

"Waiting for you." The gentleness of his own voice surprised him. For a moment, he was wary that Endymion had reemerged and possessed his body, making him sound like that, but the flash-form was nowhere to be sensed. The gentleness was all Darien's, and it dug a pit deeper in his stomach. He couldn't. To love this child would be like giving up on Serena…

He forced himself to talk. "She wanted me to bring you here so that you would regain your strength more quickly."

They realized at the same time that Rini was still holding onto his jacket: he stiffened and she let go as though it burned her.

"It would be wise for Hime-sama to stay for as long as she can," murmured Helios. "The longer she remains here, the stronger she will be when she returns."

Darien looked at Rini. "It would make Serena feel better."

He watched acceptance break across her face, then said, "I'm sorry."

Rini's eyes sliced into his, then flicked away. "For what?" Her brows were arched, cold and sardonic as she regarded the dreamflowers. "Saving me?"

"For not saving you both." Darien inhaled. "In the future."

Rini slitted a look up at him. Then she looked away. "You should have cut Buji's horns off."

Darien didn't say anything for a moment. He just watched her from above his wrists, his knees drawn up to his chest and arms on top of them.

"I'll train you. So Buji won't have to use them."

The face she turned toward him was so full of expressions that it was unreadable. "You don't have to. Serena's going to train me."

He said nothing.

Rini took his silence as disbelief.

"She is," she insisted, her voice almost shrill, the way it had been when she blamed him for letting Asanuma die. "She promised!"

"I promise too." Darien's voice was quiet. If Elysion had not been absolutely still, not a single breeze breathing, his words might have gone unheard.

He stood up and looked at Helios.

The priest nodded once and knelt to the ground, splaying his hands in the soil. The ground around them stretched and stretched, expanding to a patch of dirt, empty of grass and dream-flowers, and when it was done stretching, it yawned, deepening into a hole, the sides of which began to bead with water. The water trickled and flowed until the hole was a small pond.

Darien took the Golden Crystal from his Subspace pocket and placed it in Rini's hand. His own fingers stayed atop its spikes, finding his daughter's aura and introducing it slowly to the eager tendrils of the Golden Crystal's energy. The golden energy seemed so eager that its tendrils almost tangled with her aura, interlacing with it like fingers and squeezing in excitement. Darien heard the water in the pond lap and splash against its makeshift bank, as eager as the crystal.

Rini's eyes were wondering but also scared; they flicked up to his. She tried to move her hand away from the crystal, as he had done when Helios first began to teach him.

Darien's fingers wrapped around the crystal and her hand, held them trapped together. Hard as he tried to resist it, pride was squeezing him as eagerly as the crystal's aura. Pride that she recognized the danger of this power. She was no idiot. She would not welcome it without reservations.

"Do you feel it?" he asked, and he knew from the concentration digging into her brow that she knew he meant the golden crystal's aura. She nodded, once, eyes still wide.

"Alright," he said, and the water in the pond rose. "Let's begin."

-

Serena opened the front door before Lita had even lifted her hand to knock, and enfolded her in a tight hug.

Lita hugged her back. "What's our story?" she muttered in her ear.

Serena sighed and hugged her tighter before murmuring back, "My mom thinks we got some of our energy sucked in a youma attack. She thinks that's why Rini's still sleeping."

"Okay." Lita let go as Ikuko appeared. She smiled, returning Ikuko's tearful one, and was engulfed in another tight hug.

Through the older woman was shorter than her by nearly ten centimeters, there was something about the way she hugged Lita close, fussing over her sloppy ponytail, that made Lita feel like a little girl. She leaned into it, eyes closing for a second as she tried not to think of her own mom, and if she would have been shorter than Lita, like Ikuko was, or taller.

Kenji, who had followed Ikuko in, broke up the hug with his gruff voice. "C'mon, enough hugging, let's eat." But as they headed for the kitchen, he caught Lita's eye. "Alright there, Lita?"

Lita smiled. She had always gotten on well with Serena's dad, probably because of their mutual disapproval of Darien. "Yes, sir."

Ikuko had scrambled a mountain of eggs to go with a tower of toast, and she let them eat it on trays in the living room, where Kenji had the news on the television. She made him turn it down while they ate and talked, with only slight forcedness, of how fun the New Year's party had been before the youma attack.

But as Lita and Serena were teasing Sammy about how he had blushed when he saw his friend Mika in her kimono, Kenji sat up suddenly.

"Dad!" Sammy complained, nearly as pink as he had been when he saw Mika. He still had the tiniest crush on Lita, and getting teased not just in front of her but _by_ her was killing him. "Help your only son out!"

"Wait," Kenji said distractedly. He grabbed the remote and turned up the TV volume. "Listen."

"…school board has come to a decision concerning where to funnel Azabu High's students," the female reporter was saying.

She was standing in front of the rubble of their destroyed school. Serena could see, hanging behind the woman, a metal strut that had been sliced cleanly in half. It had been sliced by her sword, she realized, remembering how single-mindedly she and Darien had charged through the wreckage, blowing anything and everything out of their way.

"Several schools in Minato and adjoining wards have agreed to accommodate the displaced students," the reporter continued. "First years will be split between Azabu Junior High and Juuban Junior High Schools, while the upperclassmen will be attending Juuban High, Seijou High, or the Catholic Toyo Eiwa Girls' Academy. Infinity Academy on Myugen Island has also agreed to accept some Azabu High students pending certain criteria. Azabu High students should be receiving phone calls later today or early tomorrow informing them of which school they have been assigned to begin attending when the spring semester starts on January 5."

The screen returned to the main anchor, who thanked the reporter and began to talk about the reasons a team of local architects had given to explain the school's collapse, and Kenji turned it back down nearly to mute again.

"Sucks to be you guys!" said Sammy with vindictive delight. "Your school got blown up and you don't even get an extra day of vacation."

Serena stuck her tongue out at him.

"You'll probably be zoned for Juuban High, Serena, we're only a few blocks away," Ikuko mused, getting up and tugging a map out from the top of the bookshelf, blowing dust off of it. "And you live off Fourth Street, Lita? So you'll probably be sent to Seijou…"

A snort escaped Lita. "I don't see that happening," she muttered to Serena, "considering they already kicked me out once."

"This makes the second time I'm glad they kicked you out!" Serena returned happily. "You'll be at Juuban with me!"

Sammy snorted. "Why are you so sure they won't send you to the Catholic girls' school? Oh, yeah, because no one would mistake you for a GIRL – "

Serena shrieked and made a grab for Sammy's hair. He ducked and tumbled off the couch, scrambling for a pillow to use as a shield.

"Hush, you'll wake Rini," said Ikuko absently, still examining the map in front of her. "Oh, but what about the boys? I wouldn't be surprised if Asanuma's parents send him to Infinity; they're diplomats, after all."

"Is that what they meant by _certain criteria_?" Lita made a face. "Infinity's accepting people based on their parents' jobs?"

"Probably," Kenji said, leaning back in his armchair with his coffee mug held close to his chest as Sammy scrambled past him with Serena and a pillow hot on his heels.

"Hey, Serena, maybe your _boyfriend_ could get you in!" Sammy taunted as he ducked her pillow. "Doesn't he go to Infinity?"

Lita gave Serena a Your Parents Still Don't Know You Broke Up with Haruka? Look. Serena, her face already flushed from chasing Sammy, had the grace to flush darker.

"No daughter of mine's going to a school because her boyfriend gets her in," said Kenji grumpily. "Serena'll go where the school board assigns her to go."

"That's just as well," said Serena, only slightly pink-faced now, plopping down on the couch with the pillow hugged in her lap, "since I'm not dating Haruka anymore."

Sammy squawked with surprise, and Serena snatched the opportunity to hurl the pillow at him. He caught it full in the face and fell backward onto the loveseat.

"I'd certainly hope not," said Kenji gruffly, not seeming surprised by Serena's news, "after the way you were carrying on with Darien at Christmas."

Ikuko beamed. Plucking the villainous pillow from Sammy's hand, she placed it in her lap and returned to looking at the map with greater enthusiasm.

"Well, let's see, Motoki will probably be going to Juuban, too, the Furuhatas practically live next door to it. And Darien lives by the park, so I don't think they'd send him all the way to Seijou, so he'll probably be at Juuban too. Molly and Melvin are both too far away from Seijou to be sent there, so unless they get sent to the Girls' Academy – "

Here Lita and the whole Tsukino family paused to laugh at the mental image of Melvin in a Catholic school girl's uniform.

" – you'll all be together at Juuban!" finished Ikuko, a hand hovering in front of her mouth to smother any more laughter that might spill out of her. Her eyes sparkled. "You five must have a lucky star watching over you!"

-

Although Ikuko had read the map quite correctly, she was quite wrong. The gang would not be attending Juuban High School together.

The first person to realize this was Darien, who returned with Rini to her body at dusk. Serena, waiting in her room for them, told him the news.

It did not greatly interest him at that moment. He was consumed by thoughts of his conversation with Helios, of how easily Rini had taken to controlling water, of Serena's promise to train Rini. He could not help but wonder if she had offered because she, too – despite her promise to him to keep him from joining Chaos – thought that Rini might be needed to stop his future self.

And tinting these thoughts was the warmth he felt in his chest as he watched Serena, still chatting to him, fuss over Rini, undoing her tangled pigtails and tugging them gently out with a comb as Rini sat quietly, her eyes glowing with pleasure at Serena's fussing.

"Anyway," Serena said, concluding her explanation of why Juuban's bright red uniform skirts were so much prettier than Seijou's brown ones, "it's time for you to get some sleep, Darien, you look like you've been running on nothing but Mountain Dew for days." She fingered another tangle in Rini's hair. 'And you're going to need a shower and three bottles of conditioner to get these knots out, young lady. What did you do in Elysion, go swimming in a lake?"

Darien found himself actually smiling, however faintly and tiredly.

"Something like that," he said, leaning his head against the window. Eyes closing for a moment, he didn't see that a small grin had also darted across Rini's face at Serena's comment.

Serena shot him a mock glare, which he did see, as his eyes floated back open to meet hers.

Her hands went to her hips. "Are you deaf instead of blind now? I said you need to go get some sleep!"

Darien rolled his eyes at her instead of touching her face the way he wanted to and headed out the window, across the tree branch, to his apartment. The night air was so cold that by the time he landed on his balcony, he felt wide-awake. Instead of falling onto his bed fully clothed – in his tuxedo, no less – he changed into sweat pants and a t-shirt and wandered to the kitchen for something to drink. All he had in the fridge were several cans of soda.

His answering machine was blinking red, and he pressed the play button as he yawned and slumped down the cabinets to sit on the kitchen floor with a can of cold Mountain Dew in his hand. Already exhaustion was catching up to him again.

"Good afternoon," began the message, which his machine informed him had been left only an hour earlier. The voice that had left it was female, pleasant but impersonal: "This is Principal Kaori Knight from Infinity Academy calling for Darien Shields. I am calling to inform Mr. Shields that Infinity Academy has told the Minato Ward School Board that, following the unfortunate destruction of Azabu High School, our facility would be pleased to accept him as a student for the remainder of his senior year. Mr. Shields, please call me at the following number to discuss your schedule, transportation, and school uniform." She read off a number. "Happy New Year, and I look forward to hearing from you."

The soda was dripping condensation onto Darien's fingers. He put it on the floor. Then he shifted to take his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Serena's home number.

"Hey," he said as soon as Ikuko had handed the phone off to Serena. "Did any schools call you yet?"

He knew the answer before she said it. "Nope. Why, did Juuban already call you?"

The back of his head dug into the edge of the counter. "No. Infinity did."

He heard her suck in a breath. "Oh. Well, that's – that's good! Infinity's supposed to be really good."

_Shut up. I don't care how good it is. I'm going to go to school with you._

That was what Darien wanted to say. What he might have said, if Serena hadn't suddenly said, "Wait. Someone else is calling. Can you hang on for a sec?"

Impatiently, he flicked the soda can's tab with his thumb. "Yes."

As a few seconds stretched into a minute, then two, he flicked the tab again. Again. Again. A drop of blood welled up from beneath his nail. He put it to his tongue darkly, thinking. If she demanded – and he knew she would – that he go to "good" Infinity instead of Juuban with her, he could say that she wouldn't be able to keep him from turning to Chaos if she wasn't with him all the time.

The prospect was extremely enticing…and reeked of manipulation. He pushed it down, the way he had always pushed down Endymion.

"Darien?"

He sat up at her breathless voice. "What was it?"

"Infinity Academy!"

Darien's eyes went wide in the darkness of his kitchen.

"They want me to come there too!"

Relief splashed like ice cubes into his fizzing thoughts. "Yeah?"

"Yeah!" Her happiness was mingled with shock. "I've gotta – I've gotta call Lita. I mean – I can't go there if she's not – "

But there was no need to worry on that account. Not five minutes later, Serena had called Lita, who had called Motoki, who had called Darien, who had called Asanuma.

All five of them had been invited to attend Infinity Academy.

-

"And no one thinks that's just a little too convenient?" Mikai pushed himself out from underneath a customer's Honda and reached for his toolbox.

"Sure I do." Asanuma pushed the toolbox toward Mikai with his foot, leaning against the car with his arms crossed. "And if I do, you can bet Darien does, too."

Mikai frowned and pulled himself back under the car. "Maybe." His voice was muffled.

Asanuma sighed and pushed himself away from the car, returning to the hood, where he had spread out a city map. It was covered in sticky notes and highlighted lines, marking the places they had looked for Ami, color-coded by date. It was January 3; they had been looking for two days.

"I'll take Juuban tonight," the blond said, studying the familiar streets. "But I'll be a little late."

Mikai pushed out from under the car again. His green hair, which before the New Year's Party had always been straight-ironed into perfectly swooping bangs, hung limply from his forehead like he was a wilting plant. "That's fine." His voice was tired. "I don't think she's going to turn up anyway."

Asanuma cast him a disgusted look. "Don't make me give you a pep talk. Just because I'm helping you out here doesn't mean I like you enough to do that."

Mikai cracked a smile. "Don't worry, I'm under no illusions about how much you like me. Call me after you finish working with Buji, and I'll tell you where I haven't checked yet."

Asanuma folded up the map. "Who said I was gonna be working with Buji?"

Mikai snorted. "Training Buji will piss the hell out of Darien. You, my not-friend, are a Picasso in the art of pissing Darien off. Furthermore, it's not like you'd have plans to do something else – say, something _fun _– with Miss Hino out of the picture, am I right?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Conclusion: you're going to be training Buji."

"Asshole," was Asanuma's only retort as he stalked out of the garage.

He had called Iwara-san earlier that day to see if he could take Buji to the park. She had seemed surprised and slightly confused, but he had heard Buji begging her in the background, and she had agreed.

"I told her I wanted to join the soccer team," Buji informed him as they walked down the sidewalk half an hour later. "Like, to be in the Olympics someday. I told her you were going to be my coach and train me."

Asanuma had to admit that this was a pretty good idea. In fact, in thinking of how he should even begin to train Buji, it had occurred to him that the biggest problem he had faced in fighting youma – aside from the angst factor – was his endurance.

"So, for our first task in your _secret training_, we're gonna run around the park three times," Asanuma said, huffing into his mittened hands and rubbing them together. "Doesn't matter how long it takes, as long as we do it. You ready?"

"Shouldn't I try _flying_ around the park three times, instead?" said Buji dubiously. "I already know how to run."

"It wouldn't be _secret training_ if the whole city saw you flying around like a Superman wannabe."

Buji considered this with a tilted head. "True. But I would be Charizard, not Superman."

Asanuma groaned, and Buji grinned.

Then they set off.

One and a half laps in, Asanuma was panting. And maybe falling behind a little. (Just a little, mind you. Not _much_.) So when Buji whined, "I'm bored. Can't we do something else?"

"Yeah," panted Asanuma, falling to a stop. "You can practice running in Elysion. Let's learn how to draw some blood."

For this, they headed to the hidden glade in the park where Asanuma and Motoki had found out that Darien was Endymion. As they walked in the chilly shade of the close-together trees, Asanuma began to explain his plans.

"All I've got right now are my sais to teach you how to fight with, but I figure if we both use one, that should be enough for right now until I can get a hold of Toki's old bo staff."

Half of learning how to use weaponry, he had found, was to get used to having a weapon in your hand at all. That, and to get used to using it to hurt. Bashing and tearing and stabbing – inflicting injury in any way – had been the hardest part of fighting youma, and Asanuma was pretty sure it was the reason that Toki was still having such trouble. It was one thing to wave a weapon around in fancy motions. It was a totally different thing to feel it actually collide with someone, feel it sink into someone, feel it rip through someone.

For these first few lessons, he would be Buji's human punching bag. (And tearing and stabbing bag, he quipped to himself.) It was an uncomplicated plan, and would undoubtedly be messy, and yes, he would probably be scarring the kid and maybe setting him on the path to sociopathy, but he summoned the cold determination he had felt when he first made this deal with Buji and forced it to steady his hands.

He reached his Subspace pocket to pull out his sais to show them to Buji and make the boy hold onto them, get accustomed to them. But his palm encountered a different shape first.

A frown dug into his face as he pulled it out. He blinked.

"Awesome!" Buji exclaimed. "We did archery at camp!"

The miniature-sized bow in Asanuma's hand could only be meant for Buji. He handed it to the boy and reached into his pocket again, only to pull out a sack of arrows. _Mikai._ He'd wondered why the mechanic had been standing so close to him when he had turned around from getting out the map.

"So this gets to be my weapon?" said Buji excitedly. "You use sai, and Motoki has that bo staff like Donatello – "

The boy broke off then, for from just ahead of them was coming a voice.

"…if you pretend you're about to move the water like Darien taught you? But as the energy starts to go into you, push it into the sword instead. You feel it, how there's two different parts of it? That sparklier part is – "

The voice broke off. Asanuma ducked under a tree branch and into the glade just in time to see Serena and Rini, both dressed in coats and scarves, and each holding either end of Sailor Moon's long crystal sword, turn to look at him.

"Oho," said Asanuma, resisting the urge to backpedal. "Fancy meeting you two here."

Serena's eyes flicked to Rini, then back to him and Buji. She began to shake her head.

Buji pushed past Asanuma, bow and arrows in hand. "We won't tell if you won't," he said boldly, looking at the sword in both of their hands.

"You two should go." Rini was the one who said this.

Buji bristled. "You're not my boss – "

Sounds from behind Asanuma made the blond's ears prick.

"Uh-oh…" he murmured, meeting Serena's I Told You So look. "Buji, quick, gimme that bow – "

But it was too late. Asanuma felt someone drop from a tree branch to the carpet of dead leaves beside him. He winced.

Darien's eyes flicked to Buji and fastened on the bow and arrows clutched in his mittened hands.

The little boy grimaced. "I think maybe flying would have been a better idea after all, Asanuma-baka."

"Yeah," said Asanuma. "Me, too."

Then he dove for the ground as Darien lunged for him.

"Stop!" Serena rushed between the two of them, leaving the sword in Rini's hands. "Stop! Let's talk about this!"

"We _already_ talked about it!" Darien feinted right, then darted left past Serena's thrown-out arms. His finger brushed the edge of Asanuma's scarf as the blond youth sprinted to the other end of the circular pit. "We agreed Buji would learn how to transform and nothing else!"

"That decision was made without me!" Asanuma pointed out, slipping on the dead leaves as he scrambled up over the lip of the circle. "I never agreed to it!"

"Me neither!" Buji shouted. "And they're MY powers!"

"Technically, they come from the Golden Crystal," said Rini, her eyes following the chase.

Buji glared at her. "_I_'m the one with horns sticking out of my head!"

"That makes them yours," agreed Asanuma, panting as he scrambled up a tree to elude a seething Darien. The tree merely bowed, as though presenting the branch with Asanuma on it to Darien; Asanuma yelped and scrambled higher.

"How come you're not yelling at Serena for teaching Rini?" Buji demanded of Darien. "She's even younger than me!"

Darien turned from the tree Asanuma was in. The tree straightened, and Asanuma fell to the leafy ground with a thump.

"Rini has to defend herself," said Darien, paying no attention to Asanuma behind him. "Youma go after her whether she can fight or not. She doesn't have a choice. You do."

"No, I don't!"

Buji's hand squeezed the weapons in his hands, the wood creaking.

"The youma come after everyone in Tokyo! My dad didn't have powers, but they killed him! My mom doesn't have powers, but a youma attacked us in the park! None of my friends at the Christmas festival had powers, but they got attacked too! Now I have powers, but you say I have a _choice_? What's my choice? Use my powers or let them get killed?" Buji was glaring, breathing hard. "How is that a _choice_?"

Darien was very pale above his dark pullover. The knuckles of his clenched fists shone even whiter than his face. But he began to shake his head, opening his mouth as he stepped forward. "I can't let you – "

Asanuma stepped between him and Buji.

"Give it up, Darien. I'm going to train him, and that's that."

Darien's nostrils flared. He seized Asanuma by the collar as though to shake him. His eyes glowed with threat, his hands trembling as though he couldn't control them.

It pissed Asanuma off. Darien couldn't even control his own body, much less his flash-form, and he was pushing away the only people who might be able to fix whatever damage he made when he finally snapped?

"What are you going to do?" Scorn filled Asanuma's voice as he glared into the eyes burning inches from his. "Hypnotize us? Hypnotize Mayuko not to let him out of the house? Go ahead, _Endymion_."

Darien recoiled as though he'd been slapped. His eyes dimmed, jaw falling open as even white seemed to flee his face, leaving behind a sickly green.

Serena was at his arm, her hand gripping Darien's elbow. On her face was a rigidly controlled mask of anger that Asanuma was more used to seeing on Darien. Even more unusual was that it was directed at him, Asanuma.

"Watch it." Her voice was low, sharp, and threatening.

Asanuma backpedaled, but resisted the urge to soften, or to apologize. This was important. Darien might not appreciate it now, but someday he would.

"C'mon, Buji." Asanuma turned to leave the glade. They would go to his backyard to train; no one was ever home anyway.

His eye caught Rini's. She was watching him, her mouth tight, pained.

He didn't know what he should do, whether he should smile at her or not look at her. She had avoided him on New Year's after she saw his future self die. He was going to die, and they both knew it, so why bother building up any more relationship and generate more pain than there already was? She clearly already had enough memories to hurt her by reminding her of what would no longer be.

So did he. Of her, of Rei, of his little sister.

But how many times he had thought that he would give anything to have the memory of just one more day?

Asanuma doubled back. He crouched in front of her. "Hey."

She looked back at him warily.

"When it's time for you to learn stuff with fire – " He grinned. " – you come to me, okay?"

There was something pulling at the corner of her lips.

He winked. "I'll let you call me Asanuma-sensei."

The something was a smile. It broke out and followed him as he bounded back to Buji and challenged him to an endurance run all the way to his house.

-

Serena had thought that Asanuma's calling Darien Endymion would tear a debilitating, if not irreparable, gash in the boys' relationship.

But it seemed to do the opposite. When she ran into Asanuma at the mall the next day, he was picking up not only his new Infinity High uniforms but Darien's as well.

"I told him I'd pick them up for him. He's working with Buji in Elysion," he said as they headed out of the shop into the mall proper. "It's easier to shoot arrows there without people staring, and Helios apparently knows more about archery than either of us. Plus, Buji's mom is less suspicious of Buji hanging out with him, for whatever reason. As if I don't totally ooze fifty times more trustworthiness than Darien does."

"Darien?" Serena repeated. "This is Darien _Shields _we're talking about? Training Buji to _fight_? What about yesterday?"

Asanuma didn't seem as pleased with himself as she would have expected him to be. Instead, he seemed grim, knotting his hands behind his head and eyeing her. "I reckon I freaked him out yesterday."

Serena stiffened. Asanuma hadn't wanted them to tell anyone about his future self, but they hadn't told him about Darien's. She had known this yesterday, but she had been too worried about Darien to take it into account before she acted so sharply to Asanuma. Even knowing that he didn't know about what his future self had told Darien, she didn't see why he had baited Darien like that.

Nor did she see why it had worked. Because, clearly, it had, if Darien was not only _letting_ Buji be trained but assisting in training him as well!

"We had good intentions, you know," Serena said now. "We don't want Buji to get hurt."

"I know." Asanuma nodded, then shrugged. "Actually, your intentions are probably nobler than mine."

Serena glanced over at him, catching his shadowed blue eyes. "What do you mean?"

He shrugged. "You guys are trying to protect everyone. I'm just trying to make sure Rini will be taken care of."

"She will be." Serena's answer was immediate.

Asanuma looked over at her. "Serena…you know…"

"The future's going to change." Serena was staring straight ahead, her steps determined. "Rini's alone in the future except for you. She didn't know me. But she will. I'm not going to leave her. I told her that now that I know her, things are going to be different. Just by being here, she's changed things. She won't be left alone with just you to grow up. We'll stay with her and stop the Black Moon from getting anywhere near her, and she won't have to come to the past, and neither will you. You won't die."

Asanuma was silent for a moment. A few meters ahead of them, he could see the fountain at the central court of the mall, the spray of water dancing up from its center. "I like that future."

"Rei's going to be in it, too." Serena turned to face him as the stopped in front of the fountain. The fine mist sprayed his eyelashes. "And Ami. Everyone."

Asanuma looked down into the water, past their wavering reflections. "I don't have any pennies."

Serena's reflection, with its silver scars, seemed to glint in the water among the flashes of copper at the bottom. "We don't need any." She touched the water. "We've got each other."

-

The first day of the new semester dawned cloudy but bright. The Infinity Academy building, at 27 stories high, towered to the sky like an obelisk, its countless windows glittering in the cloudy light. Serena had seen pictures, of course; the academy was one of the area's landmarks, all the more well-known because of the countless celebrities who attended it, but the pictures had ill-prepared her for the real thing. Her heart pounded with awe and excitement for a full two minutes upon seeing it and realizing that _she had been chosen to go here!_

The excitement was short-lived, however. As they waited in the parking garage for the morning bell to ring and summon them to their classes, Serena was attacked by the inescapable panic of being a new kid. What if no one liked her? What if she couldn't find her way around? What if she couldn't pass her classes?

And, although the presence of her friends should have made it better, she found herself even more worried: what if everyone else makes friends and leaves me behind?

She tried to combat her apprehension by talking. Everyone had spent the drive there complaining about how ugly the Infinity uniform was, so this was the topic she chose.

"You know, guys, the uniform doesn't look _so_ bad," she remarked with forced optimism, looking down at her reddish-brown plaid skirt and forest green knee socks.

Lita grunted, clearly not in agreement. "It looks bad enough. What's this skirt made out of, llama wool?"

"You think the skirt's bad, try wearing the pants." Asanuma shifted his legs beneath the itchy, heavy material.

Darien's only comment was, "I'm going to burn this thing."

"I think maybe the uniforms are meant for light-haired people," Serena said tentatively.

"Probably to suit all the foreign students," said Lita grumpily.

Looking around the garage, Serena saw that the Infinity High student population was much lighter-haired, darker-skinned, and taller, in general, than Azabu's had been.

"Infinity's for kids like Asanuma," said Motoki, eliciting a scowl from his blond friend. "Rich people's kids."

There was no denying that Infinity was a rich school. Even the twenty-seven story campus aside, what other school had a two-level parking garage for its students, full of gleaming European cars?

Among those gleaming cars were Darien's red Mustang – waxed by Mikai's friends at the garage until it gleamed like a cherry, or perhaps fresh blood – and Asanuma's silver Porsche.

One of the local subway lines went direct from Azabu to Myugen Island, letting passengers off at a stop only a block from Infinity Academy, but Darien – to everyone's slight surprise – had offered to drive them instead, and Asanuma had offered to share the load.

No one could say that the two vehicles didn't fit right in with these plush surroundings. But the same couldn't quite be said of their passengers, thought Serena. She glanced around again at the Infinity students in the parking garage, noting how tall they were, how distinguished-looking, like models posing for a shoot as they leaned casually against their cars or meandered toward the school entrance.

By contrast, Serena felt conspicuously ugly. She was distinctly aware of her scars, climbing up her neck to her face, intertwining with her features. She felt conscious, too, of how babyish her hairstyle was, how short her legs must look beneath the skirt that hung to just above her knees instead of skimming her thighs the way the others girls' did.

Her friends looked as uncomfortable as she felt. Lita sat in the passenger seat of Asanuma's car with the door still open; she chewed on a straw with a particularly guarded expression stiffening her face. Motoki was standing beside the open car door, shifting from foot to foot with his hands jammed in the pockets of his neatly creased plaid slacks.

Even Asanuma, who, as a diplomat's son, was closer to belonging in this crowd of students than any of them were, didn't seem like his usual self. He slouched against the hood of his car with his arms crossed, face tense.

Only Darien seemed unperturbed. Maybe it was because he was always so unrelaxed that he merely seemed the same as usual, with his eyes sweeping back and forth beneath his recently trimmed bangs, taking in the garage and the people. He was drumming his fingers on the roof with one hand and absently buttoning and unbuttoning the cuff of Serena's sleeve with the other. Serena didn't know what had possessed him to do this, but it was the only action he made that revealed he might be feeling the same apprehension as them. So, willing to let him have any comfort he could find, she didn't ask him to stop.

"Serena?" A voice came from a few meters away. "Is that you?"

Serena turned, Darien's thumb brushing the inside of her wrist. Her eyes went wide. "Haruka-kun! Um – hi!"

"Hi yourself," returned the light-haired racer with a smile, coming to a stop a meter away from them – a not unwise distance, considering the looks that Darien and Asanuma were both giving him. He cast them all cordial greeting smiles before returning his eyes to Serena. "So you're one of the transfer students from Azabu?"

"Yup," said Serena a trifle awkwardly.

Haruka smiled at her. "Good luck blocking out the memory of this uniform when you have to wear it all day, huh?"

Serena smiled, still awkwardly. "Yeah…"

"Hey, you know that we can still be friends even though you dumped me, right?" Haruka's blueberry eyes sparkled playfully.

Serena laughed, rolling her eyes at herself. She was being stupid. "Right. Exactly. Um, so… do you know how Miss Kaioh's doing?"

Haruka's smile suddenly turned slightly brittle. "Fine, I think."

"Sorry," said Serena, eyes widening a little. Had the two had a fight, perhaps? "I didn't mean to pry!"

Haruka's smile softened again. "Not at all. I'd just forgotten you knew that I knew her. I was surprised."

"Well, I'm going to miss having her for class," said Serena sincerely. "Could you tell her? And wish her happy new year for me?"

Haruka's smile turned slightly lopsided as he looked at her. "Well, I'm pretty sure she'll miss you, too, Muffinhead. I'll tell her."

The bell rang then, and between Darien and Asanuma, Serena was propelled quite quickly and inexorably away.

-

Each of the teens had been scheduled to have a meeting with Infinity's principal, Kaori Knight, that day. Lita's meeting was first, during the foreign literature class that she and Serena thankfully shared. She returned from her meeting after half an hour, looking a little shell-shocked but also pleased as she took her seat and shot Serena a thumbs up.

This reassured Serena, whose meeting would take place during fourth period, right before lunch. When the clock hands hit eleven twenty-five, she left her math class for the marble-floored hallways, where it only took her three minutes to find the elevators.

The principal's office was on the top floor of the 27-story building that housed Infinity Academy. The high school classrooms – for Infinity Academy offered classes not only for high schoolers but also for pre-kindergarteners, elementary, and junior high schoolers as well – were located on the first eight stories, along with the two-story parking garage. Hence, Serena's elevator ride from the fourth floor to the main office took a fair amount of time.

When she finally did reach the office, she found that it was as plush as any of the classrooms (each of which had a row of flat-screen computers located along one wall and interactive SmartBoards mounted on the whiteboards). The marble of the floor was sea-green, and the ceiling was made of glass that let the sunlight shine off the polished surfaces of the furniture. There was not one, not two, but five secretaries sitting behind desks with gleaming computers, and all of them smiled at Serena as she stepped out of the elevator.

The light-haired young woman sitting in the center desk, where a nameplate that read _Cya Purinu_ sat, motioned her forward with a polite gesture. "Mrs. Knight is ready to see you now, Miss Tsukino."

Serena followed the secretary's gesturing hand through the open door a meter behind her desk. She stopped not two steps through the doorway, eyes widening as she looked around the principal's office.

It was even nicer than the atrium with the secretaries. Spacious, one of its walls was taken up by a tremendously huge aquarium that featured bright tropical fish and even a bright yellow eel, and the opposite wall was made entirely of glass, a huge window looking down on the delta.

Kaori Knight was as impressive as her office. She had striking red hair and a tall, lithe build that reminded Serena of Lita. She stood from behind her sprawling desk, elegant in her pantsuit, to shake Serena's hand and smile at her.

"Serena, good morning. It's such a pleasure to have you with us."

"Thank you so much for having me, ma'am." Serena smiled in return, bowing automatically, although the traditional gesture seemed almost out of place in this high-tech setting. "Infinity is amazing."

Mrs. Night's smile widened. "We try to provide the best for our students, especially since they give their best to us. I'm looking forward very much to seeing your best, Serena."

"Um, a-about that." Serena blushed a little at her stammer. "I'm a little confused, Kaori-san. I'm not – um, well, I'm not particularly good at anything, so I'm not sure why I'm here – "

"Aren't you?" said Mrs. Night. She looked down at the stack of colored folders on her desk and withdrew one, opening it. "I have it on good authority that you are an excellent runner."

_Good authority?_ Then Serena realized. _Coach Etoukou!_

She nearly laughed aloud. She couldn't believe that her crazy PE coach had been the reason she got to come to this school with Darien and her friends (or that he would ever be called a "good authority")! She would send him a box of chocolates, she really would. Or maybe a six-pack of sports drinks; he'd probably like that better.

"Here at Infinity, we urge all of our students to excel in their chosen extracurriculars as well as in academics," Mrs. Knight continued. "We have several students, for example, who have acted or are acting in feature films and television shows. Several others are national athletes in training for the Olympic trials. We even have some gifted musicians who play around the world. You might have heard of Saffron, for example?"

Serena smiled, perhaps a little goofily. She had certainly heard of Saffron. She had also saved the adolescent celebrity from a youma a year ago. "Yes, ma'am."

Mrs. Knight gave her an approving smile. "Two periods out of each day are devoted to those chosen activities. Your friend Lita, for example, has chosen martial arts as her focus. She will be spending two periods each day working with our instructor, who won two gold medals in judo at the Olympics several years ago."

Serena's mouth hung open.

Mrs. Knight smiled and leaned forward, her hands clasped. "I would very much like to see you pursue your natural talent in athletics as well, Serena. May I put down track as your focus?"

Even though Serena knew that her speed had more to do with the fact that she wasn't quite human, she could not help but feel pride spreading through her, warm like heated syrup. She had felt like she didn't belong at this school, but Mrs. Knight was acting as though it would be an advantage for _Infinity_ to have _her_, not the other way around!

She forced her widely-grinning mouth to close. "Yes, ma'am. Please put me down."

"Excellent." Mrs. Knight returned her smile and swiveled to pull out her computer keyboard.

Just then, the phone on her desk beeped. "Mrs. Knight, your husband is on Line Four," said the polite secretary's voice.

Mrs. Knight pressed a button. "Thank you, Mimette." She glanced up at Serena apologetically. "I'm afraid I have to take this call. It has been a pleasure talking with you, Serena."

"Yes, ma'am, you too," said Serena, standing.

"I'm sure we'll speak again soon," said Mrs. Knight with a last smile and picked up the phone, putting it to her ear.

Serena slipped out of the office and past the smiling secretaries. "It's lunchtime now, Serena," said one of them, handing her a pass. "Do you know where the cafeteria is?"

"I can find it," Serena said, smiling her thanks.

-

The cafeteria didn't seem as much like a cafeteria as it did a restaurant, Serena realized as she stepped through the double doors into it. The floor was carpeted, not linoleum like Azabu's cafeteria floor, and the walls were wainscoted, burgundy on the bottom with golden wallpaper swirling above it. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, bathing the room in several buttery glows, and the fifty or so small tables that filled the room had white tablecloths, silverware settings, and high-backed wooden chairs. One side of the room was taken up by a long buffet, where Serena could spot five different kinds of out-of-season fruits and what looked like several pies.

Despite all this luxury, however, there were hardly as many students in the cafeteria as Serena would have expected: less than half of the number that they had seen hanging out in the parking garage that morning. She wondered whether they skipped lunch or went off-campus for it, and then wondered where Haruka ate lunch, and then forgot about these all these thoughts altogether when she spotted her friends.

They were hard to miss, since they were the only large group in the room; everywhere else, people were knotted in pairs or trios. They were also the loudest group by far; Motoki was saying something about getting to work with the chef here and demanding happily, "Can you believe it?"

"No," said Darien flatly as Serena slid into the chair that had been saved for her between him and Lita. He slid a plate with a noodle salad and slice of chocolate pie to her. "It's too good to be true."

"Can't we just accept something GOOD in our lives for once?" said Lita. "You know, the silver lining to our school getting blown up?"

"I see nothing but silver linings from that so far," said Asanuma, leaning back with his hands laced behind his head. "That little explosion got me out a physics lab write-up AND a Spanish impromptu."

"So you call these uniforms a silver lining, then?" said Lita skeptically.

"They could use a silver lining, they chafe so much," said Motoki, rubbing at his waist, and they all burst out laughing as he grinned sheepishly.

None of them missed the rather unimpressed glances that the other students in the café cast their way.

"I don't know if I'd rather go outside to get away from them or stay in here to make them more annoyed," said Asanuma, leaning forward so that only the table would hear them.

"There's nowhere else to eat unless you want to go back to the parking garage," Motoki said. "There's no courtyards anywhere, I checked."

They were all silent for a minute, remembering their dependable oak tree that was now in pieces among the rubble of Azabu High School.

"How long do you think it'll take to get Azabu back up?" Lita said.

Motoki heaved a sigh. "Not before we've graduated."

"Oh," said Serena softly. She had forgotten that the boys would be graduating this year. Darien flicked her a glance, and she knew he knew what she was thinking. She wondered what preparations he had made, what colleges he had applied to, and if he had felt disappointed not to go to one of the colleges one the posters that had once plastered his wall.

Even if he wasn't going to college on a different continent, life was surely going to be very different. Keio University, for example, was hardly far from where they lived, but one rarely saw its students out anywhere unless they were at a café with ten empty coffee cups and monstrous textbooks scattered around them. Universities, especially the prestigious ones that Darien deserved to go to, required tremendous amounts of studying and work.

She looked at Motoki and Asanuma, though, and even more morbid thoughts filled her mind. She knew that if she were Asanuma, she would be wondering what the point in even going to college was, if he was just going to die. And Motoki was probably worried about his father even living to see his high school graduation, much less living to see him attend university.

She met Lita's eyes and knew that their thoughts – about Motoki, at least – were following the same path.

"Wow, suddenly I feel really depressed," remarked Asanuma in his usual blunt way. "Way to go, guys."

The bell rang, then, announcing the time to return to class. Asanuma stood up. "I'm heading to pick up Buji after class is out," he said. "Anyone coming with?"

"No go for me," Lita said. "I'm working with Rini tonight. Right, Shields?"

Darien nodded, sipping the last of his soda.

"I'm helping Mikai look for Ami," Serena said, eyes distancing as she thought. Mikai had discovered in old archives of the city plans a network of abandoned subway tunnels that he wanted to check. It seemed far-fetched, not to mention dangerous, but she would sooner cut off her feet than leave one stone unturned in their search for Ami.

"And you two?" Asanuma looked at Motoki and Darien.

Motoki looked uncomfortable. "Darien's going to take another look at my dad." It was clear he didn't want to talk anymore about it.

Darien stood, handing Serena her bag. "Get Buji home by six," he told Asanuma. "He needs time to finish his homework before he comes to Elysion."

Asanuma sketched a salute. "Aye-aye, captain!"

-

"Here." Mikai handed her a cell phone.

It was light and so thin that Sailor Moon was afraid she was going to break it just by holding it. She glanced up at Mikai, at the small golden stud that the normal hoop in his eyebrow became when he transformed into his Shittenou form.

"Are you rich?"

Mikai looked up from where he was slipping his own cell phone safely into his tunic, the pierced eyebrow raised. "Pardon?"

Moon flushed. "I just meant – this phone. It seems really expensive… and I tend to break things."

"Oh." Mikai laughed. "Well, I am rich, so it's not too big a deal if you break it, except I'd really like us to be able to get a hold of each other in case we find something."

"Yeah, me too." Moon smiled wryly, following Mikai away from the cobweb-covered stairs they had descended into an abandoned subway station. "But…" She hesitated. "You and Darien are both…well-off. Why were you both at the orphanage?"

Mikai didn't seem anywhere near as uncomfortable with the situation as she did. In fact, judging by the grin he cast her over his shoulder, he was amused to answer her questions. "Well, _I_, unlike our noble prince, am a self-made man."

She opened her mouth, then shut it.

He laughed. "I didn't make my money working at the garage. I've invented a few things, is all. They made a tidy sum for me. _Darien_'s money is all inherited, so far as I know."

"I thought…it seems like if his family had so much money, there would have been someone to take care of him instead of him having to go to the orphanage." Moon felt like she should feel indignant. "A nanny, or a butler, or – or _someone_!"

Mikai shrugged. "I don't know exactly what the deal with that was. Darien doesn't talk about his family, even to me. I don't even what his parents' jobs were." He hesitated. "I will tell you, though, he was pretty scary as a kid. Like…Rini?" He shook his head. "Darien was worse than her. Exponentially worse."

"Rini's not bad," said Moon, and this time she was sharply, unhesitantly indignant.

Mikai held up his hands. He regarded her, and she felt like he was studying her features closely. Inspecting them.

"I'm not saying she is. Just that she's very guarded. Very self-sufficient, very defensive. Darien was like that. I mean – " He snorted, and it wasn't a happy sound. "_I_ got adopted. And I was the nastiest prick of a kid you can imagine. But Darien was at the orphanage until he finally wrangled his way out to live as a ward of the state in his own apartment with his parents' money."

Moon's breath was tight in her throat. She had known that Darien had been at an orphanage, but she had never thought about the fact that he had never been adopted. She had never thought about the sting of rejection that must accompany that fact, had never realized that potential parents must have seen Darien in the orphanage and actively chosen _not_ to adopt him. It stung like winter air digging into her lungs.

To think that he could have known a mother's adoration, a father's affection…

An image wisped up in her mind's eyes then like a ghost, but it wasn't of the boy that Darien might be now if he had known the love of a family as he grew up. It was of Rini, and what she could have been if she had known two parents' love, instead of their absence, as she grew up.

And close behind it, like a shadow, clung an image of Rini as she might have been if she had not had Asanuma to raise her. She was skin and bones and veins, trembling, hunched in on herself in clothes too big for her, fevered eyes burning with hatred from beneath tangled bangs that no gentle hand had ever brushed.

"Serena?"

She dragged in a breath. Eyes skittering up, she saw Mikai looking at her, eyes narrowed with concern and suspicion. He let go of the grip he had closed around her arm.

"All's well that ends well," he said, and it sounded like a reminder.

She ducked her head in a nod, sucking in another breath, and looked up. They had reached the subway platform: the tracks, nearly hidden in a carpet of dust and trash, stretched out to either side of them into the darkness of the tunnels.

"My number's speed-dialed into every button on that phone." Mikai tapped his chest where his cell phone lay inside his tunic. "Except number 9, that speed-dials Darien. Are you ready?"

She had her sword out, a sparkling haze of silver light washing from the blade that made the air look as dusty as the tracks. Still, she preferred it to the battery-powered flashlight that Mikai had handed her from the set he had buckled to his belt. "Yes."

She climbed down the platform to the dirt around the tracks.

"Hang on."

Moon turned curiously.

Mikai hopped off the platform, landing in front of her. "Put this down for a sec?" he asked, motioning at her sword.

Moon's brow furrowed, but she leaned it against the platform.

"Now." Mikai clasped his hands together and nodded at Moon to do the same. Confused, she did, and his eyes flicked to her fingers before he closed his eyes and said, Dear, God or Kami-sama or anyone watching over us down here, please keep us safe from mutant hoboes and sewer rats and please let us meet the Ninja Turtles even though I know their permanent residence is in New York."

Sailor Moon opened her eyes and blinked. Mikai grinned at her and waved before setting off to the left tunnel, dust swirling in his wake.

She grabbed her sword again and, still shaking her head in confusion or perhaps disbelief, headed to the right.

-

"I'm really impressed, Rini." Lita let go of the punching bag she had been holding and swiped her sleeve across her flushed forehead. "You actually made me move twice."

Rini grimaced. "Are you being sarcastic?"

"Me? Sarcastic?" said Lita, and Rini did smile a little at this. "Seriously, kiddo, you weight, what? Fifty pounds? I'm almost three times your weight, AND I'm all muscle, holding this monstrous punching bag. When I first started, I was twelve, and the person holding my punching bag was a scrawny teenage boy. And I _still_ didn't move it once. So, no, I'm not being sarcastic."

Rini eyed the punching bag, which had several strange char marks on it, along with a great deal of duct tape, and didn't say anything.

"Anyway, I'm ready for a break." Lita stretched. "Let's go raid Shields' fridge. He hates when I drink all his soda."

Rini followed Lita to the kitchen. They were in Darien's apartment because he had a punching bag in his bedroom. Rini wasn't sure whose idea this had been, but the fact that Darien had been willing to let Lita into his bedroom and that Lita had been willing to enter his bedroom seemed to suggest that they were pretty desperate for her to gain a little muscle.

This didn't make sense to her, since she couldn't see a situation where she would be able to punch her way free from a youma – they sucked energy and had less corporeal ways of entrapping her, after all – but Serena had been very enthusiastic about it, and Rini had gone along with it.

She smothered a sigh. Serena had promised to train her, but so far, she'd only spent one afternoon with her, trying to help her channel her energy through her sword to make an attack like her Twilight Flash. It was stupid to feel resentful, especially since she knew that Serena wasn't off spending her time shopping or playing video games, but looking for her fellow Senshi, so she quashed down the bitterness as well as she could.

Lita popped open a can of Mountain Dew, took a long draught, and sighed with satisfaction. "The last Mountain Dew. Shields is gonna flip."

Rini's question popped out without thought. "Why don't you like him?"

Lita blinked and set the can down. "Who says I don't like him?"

Rini looked at her pointedly.

She snorted a laugh. "Okay, okay. I can see how you could THINK I don't like him. But I, personally, don't have a problem with Shields. Jupiter's flash-form…she's another story." Her face darkened, then brightened forcedly. "Darien and I might not be bosom buddies, but that's just because we're so much alike."

"You both like Serena."

"We both love Serena," Lita corrected. She ruffled Rini's hair. "I think you've got that in common with us, eh?"

Rini couldn't help it; she flushed.

"Nothing to be ashamed of," Lita said, her hand still on Rini's head. "You can't help it. It's like getting chickenpox: it happens to everybody sometime."

"What's like getting chickenpox?"

Lita jumped and knocked the can of Mountain Dew over, swearing. "The hell, Shields!"

Darien pulled off his domino mask, shaking the faint layer of snowflakes from his shoulders. Somewhere along the way, he'd lost – or abandoned – the cape. "Is that my Mountain Dew?"

"Hell yes," said Lita, snatching a paper towel to throw on the fizzing puddle of soda. "Geeze, could you give a little warning?"

Darien rolled his eyes. "What, am I supposed to call my own apartment and say, hi, Lita, I'm coming back to my apartment now, be sure to hide all evidence of your freeloading from my fridge?"

Lita grumbled something, then crossed to the hooks by the door, grabbing her coat. "Any luck?"

Darien's face went blank. "No." He sounded apologetic.

Lita sighed and pulled on her coat, then jammed a hat over her head, ponytail and all. "I'm gonna go see him," she said. Her eyes flicked to Rini. "Are you cool with Dare taking you home?"

She wasn't really, but she nodded. What was her stupid awkwardness to what Motoki was going through?

Lita smiled and shut the door behind her, leaving Rini and Darien in the rather dark kitchen.

The brunette's joking still hung in the air, though, like a comforting third presence, and Rini moved to mop up the rest of Lita's soda wile Darien leaned to switch on a light. She put the sopping paper towel in the trash; Darien went over the sticky spot with a wet washcloth.

"How'd it go?" he said then, turning from the sink to meet her eyes awkwardly. The washcloth was twisted loosely in his hands.

Rini met his eyes for a moment, then let her gaze slide away, to a picture sitting on a table in the living room. Motoki in an apron was blushing madly in it, while Asanuma and Serena laughed madly, tears running down their face, in the stools at the arcade.

"Okay," she said vaguely. "I just punched the bag over and over." Her arms were actually trembling a little in fatigue.

Darien nodded and, as though it took a bit of effort, set the washcloth down in the sink. "That's good. A good start." He cleared his throat. "I'll take you home now?"

They were in the elevator, avoiding their reflections in the mirrored wall, when Rini's mouth involuntarily asked a question again. "Why does your punching bag look like it was in a fire?"

Darien's eyes widened; he made a choked sound. Rini eyed him with a mixture of disdain and alarm.

"I forgot about that," he said, lips curved just enough to make a smile. "When I was first learning with the crystal… I was really angry and punching it, and somehow I made it explode in my face. It was when I was blind, so I walked around with no eyebrows until Helios finally told me they'd been singed off."

Rini choked on a laugh.

"Go ahead and laugh," said Darien darkly, though he was still wearing that slight smile. "I'm sure part of Lita's training is learning how to take joy from my humiliation, and I wouldn't want you to be a bad student."

It was the sort of thing he might have said to Serena, or Buji, or one of their other friends. And he had just said it to her. Rini tried not to feel happy. She tried very hard.

"Listen," Darien said just as she had almost succeeded. "Buji's coming to Elysion again tonight."

Jealousy filled Rini.

"Do you want to come and listen to what Helios is teaching him?"

Rini looked up. He was still facing ahead, but he was watching her from the corner of his eye.

She nodded. "Okay."

-

Sailor Moon's fuku didn't include a watch, so she had to fumble inside her Subspace pocket to find the phone Mikai had given her to figure out how long she had been wandering the dark tracks.

She had passed two more abandoned stations by now and had one false alarm: someone wrapped in a ratty blanket lying on a bench near what used to be a newspaper stand. They had been very small under the blanket, small enough to be Ami, so she had approached, gulping aside her terror that maybe the shape under it was a dead body, it seemed so still.

The person had turned over, though, as she approached, and a whiskery face had blinked up at her.

She had relaxed, mostly. It was a homeless person. He snorted at her, still half-asleep, and closed his eyes again.

She hadn't thought to wake him up and ask him if he had possibly seen anyone else down here, and she regretted that now. Although along with her mounting regret was a mounting certainty that Ami wasn't down here. Even if she had somehow ended up down here, Moon couldn't imagine her staying here; she would be even more terrified of the pitch-black tunnels and empty stations and hobos than Serena was.

Granted, if she didn't have a tiara or sword to light her way like Moon did, would Ami even be able to find her way out? The thought kept Moon looking.

A glance at the super-thin cell phone's screen informed her that it was past seven. She had told her mother that she would be at Lita's that evening, studying and catching up with their new classes, but her mother expected her home that night to tell her about her first day at Infinity. It had taken twenty minutes to get to the spot where she and Mikai had descended into the subway three hours ago, and the next station might be as far as half an hour away by foot.

She delicately peeled the phone open, awkwardly because she was still holding her sword, and pushed one of the tiny buttons.

Mikai answered on the second ring. "Did you find something?"

Moon shook her head as she continued through the darkness. "Uh-uh. You?"

Mikai sounded like he had shrugged. "A couple consummating their relationship in one of the abandoned stations, but that's all."

Moon wrinkled her nose. "Yuck."

"Yeah, well, neither of them was Ami. I checked. Do you have to get going now?"

"Yes, but I don't want you to be here without backup – "

"We've covered nearly all the stations. You've gone past four, right?"

Moon, thought, counting. "Yes."

"And I've seen three. There's only eight altogether before the Myugen Line starts up, and that's active, so there's no use checking there. I'll check the eighth station and then get going."

"Myugen?"

"Yeah, you know. Where you guys are going to school now."

"I didn't realize we were so close…" Moon's thoughtful murmur broke off as suddenly an intake of breath came from the other end of the line. "Mikai?"

"Hang on, I just saw something." Mikai's breath became faster and louder, and faintly she heard the sound of his feet slapping the ground. "Hey!" he shouted to someone. "Hey!"

Moon heard a shrill sound, like something keening, then the sound of scuffling. At the same time, strange aura flared in her awareness. She shoved her sword into her subspace pocket and burst into a sprint, following the aura.

Immediately her tiara began to glow like a headlamp, cutting through the pitch-blackness before her. From the phone still clutched in her hand, she could hear the sounds of fighting, brief shouts and snatches of voices.

Then the sounds came not just from the phone but from in front of her, and her tiara light flashed onto flailing limbs, glinting metal.

"Mikai?" she shouted, and without waiting for an answer, flung off her tiara. "Tiara Stardust!"

The glowing disc spun through the dark, showering a sparkling rain that glowed like fireworks drifting from the sky. Briefly they illuminated two forms, both of which froze in their steps as the sparkles settled upon them.

The tiara whirled back to Moon's waiting hand. She pushed it onto her forehead, still glowing, and drew out her sword, willing it to glow and illuminate the scene.

One of the forms was Mikai. Hands locked in the other form's, braced against it as though grappling, his eyes flicked toward her. He was as frozen by Moon's paralyzing Stardust as the other person was…a youma?

She stepped closer, holding her sword nearer, trying to see it but not wanting to frighten it. For its eyes were rolling like a frightened horse about to buck, and they rolled nearly back into its head as she drew closer, its breathing growing more ragged, as though the light from her sword pained it.

It was not one of the faceless black youma, but nor was it like one of the Four Sisters. It reminded Moon most of the Dark Kingdom youma, with their painfully jutting skin and limbs; bone was pushing out at the shoulders, elbows, and collarbones of this one, from what Moon could see, not smooth bone but rough, calciferous growths. Its fingers, she saw as well, where they were locked with Mikai's, had the same rough material growing over and out of the fingers at the joints and nails, like an exoskeleton made of coral.

None of this puzzled Moon so much as the aura that she sensed from the youma did.

It felt…vaguely human.

Mikai moved, suddenly. Moon's attention snapped to him. He pulled his hands away from the youma's, though with a bit of effort: the stardust's effect was wearing off.

Moon's eyes shot back to the youma. As the stardust's power waned over it, all it did was stumble backward, against the tunnel wall. Bony growths scraping against the wall, it slid down to the floor.

Mikai twitched a hand. Gravel-filled dirt sprang up and closed around the youma's feet and hands, trapping them in the ground.

The youma stared vaguely up at them through cataract-clouded eyes. The rags it wore weren't black, and didn't look like they had once been the fancy, bright outfits she was used to the usual youma wearing. It looked more like…if Moon was to hazard a guess…a school uniform? A suit? That scrap hanging from around its neck like a leash could have been a tie.

"It's a male," said Mikai.

Moon swallowed hot saliva. "There aren't male youma."

The…being (Moon could no longer call it a youma, for a horrified certainty that it was not was burgeoning like bile inside her) made a sound. It was a groan, a whine through closed lips.

No, not closed lips. His lips moved back, the slightest bit, but his teeth stayed clamped together as though they had been glued.

Moon knelt, slowly, setting down her sword. Mikai made a sound and grabbed for her; she pushed him away.

"Excuse me," she said quietly, soothingly to the being. His cloudy eyes darted and strained. "I'm very sorry, but I'm going to check something."

Tentatively, she reached out and, with her gloved fingers, pulled the lips gently away from the teeth, exposing the jaw.

"His mandible's fused to the maxilla," Mikai breathed, crouched beside her. "The bone's grown over and calcified them together."

"He can't talk," Moon said grimly, carefully removing her fingers. "I'm sorry," she said again to the man. "We're going to help you, I promise."

No sooner had she said this than a sound came from behind her.

It was a familiar sound. All youma seemed to have the same laugh.

Moon sprang up, grabbing her sword.

A youma – it was, she knew from her senses, most definitely a youma, no spark of humanity at all, even though he was male – stood not a meter away, glowing faintly in the darkness like a ghost, pale-haired and pale-skinned and light-clothed.

"Sailor Moon," he said, sweeping its long hair over its shoulder. "My thanks for finding little nii-chan there for me. Allow me to express my gratitude – Electron Chain!"

Mikai's eyes shot wide, and he shouted something, lunging at Sailor Moon. She had only enough presence of mind to expel a disfocused Twilight Flash over them before they both slammed into the ground, her spine slamming into the track.

"Shit," grunted Mikai in her ear, shoving himself back up.

She followed his eyes and saw that the man-who-wasn't-a-youma had vanished. Only a faint luminescence on the ground and wall showed that he had ever been there.

"How unpleasant."

The youma was still hovering, his hands glowing faintly, the same luminescence as the wall.

"That is a useful attack you have, Sailor Moon. I shall have to find a way to counter it."

With that, he disappeared, plunging them back into darkness but for Moon's faintly silver sword and the luminescence on the wall.

-

Darien picked everyone up early the next morning. Serena and Mikai had called him immediately the night before to tell him what had happened, but with no immediate path of action available, they had decided to wait until they were all together the next day to tell everyone else.

Motoki, with his long legs, sat in the passenger seat, while Lita, Serena, and Asanuma were smushed together in the back seat. Lita and Asanuma had both fussed about this argument – especially Asanuma, who couldn't understand why he couldn't just drive himself to school – until they heard about what had happened the night before.

"A _human_ youma?" repeated Motoki, looking sick.

"Darien said that at the Christmas festival, a bunch of humans had been made to feel like youma," Serena said. "But this was different, this one _looked_ like a youma.

"Admittedly, I don't have a ton of experience, but I don't think it necessarily looked like a youma." Mikai's voice came through the speaker phone on Darien's cell, which Motoki was holding. "The other youma I've encountered have much less gruesome appearances. This guy looked like a human gone wrong."

"But his aura was more like a youma's than anything else." Serena wrapped her arms around her stomach, remembering.

Asanuma cleared his throat. "Remember how on New Year's I went to look for Rei?"

"Hard to forget," said Darien. Serena saw his knuckles whiten around the steering wheel.

Asanuma ignored the tension. "I went because I saw an article in the paper about a body they found in the bay." He told them the gist of the article and how he had thought that Rei might have been the one to burn the body. "What if that youma was really a person like this one was?'

"Seems pretty likely." This was Mikai's voice.

"What I wanna know is, what was he doing in the tunnel and the other one doing in the bay?" Lita said.

"Trying to escape," said Serena immediately. "He was terrified." She saw again those calciferous growths, slowly taking over his body. "He was trying to get away from something."

"The Black Moon," said Mikai now. "It's some experiment."

"Why do they need to experiment on making humans into youma?" Lita said, leaning forward, elbows on her knees. "They already have tons of youma. Why do they need to mess with humans?"

"Maybe they don't have tons." Darien pulled to a stop at a red light. "The Black Moon has sent out a lot fewer youma than the Dark Kingdom ever did." He let them digest this, then said, "What exactly did the youma that showed up do to the man?"

"I think," said Mikai, "based on what happened and on the name of the attack it used, that it…stripped the electrons from his body."

There was an even longer silence as they digested this. Serena knew only that electrons traveled in circles at the center of atoms and that they were what moved around when elements reacted with each other. What happened when all the electrons in something were removed?

Something bad, judging from Darien and Motoki's expressions.

Lita sat forward, fingers locking around Motoki's headrest. "How is that even possible?"

"Does it matter how?" said Asanuma. "He did it."

"And it definitely kept us from even having a body to examine to figure out what was going on," added Mikai.

"Which wasn't the case for the body in the bay," said Darien. "It seems like they tried to dispose of it but failed."

"Or were stopped," said Asanuma.

"Which brings us back to Rei," Lita said.

Serena and Darien, through the rearview mirror, both glanced at Asanuma. But he didn't launch into a bright-eyed, flush-faced frenzy the way that he usually did when Rei was mentioned. He was motionless, instead, staring out the window, thinking.

Motoki and Lita seemed to notice this, too, flicking curious glances the blonde's way, but Mikai's sigh through the phone speaker drew their attention away.

"I guess all we can do right now is start checking out missing person's files for any clues based on what Serena and I saw of the poor guy," he said. "Unless someone wants to try to break into the coroner's morgue to find that body from the bay."

"I doubt that would work," said Darien. "If the youma tracked this escapee down, they probably tracked down the body to finish the job they failed at the first time."

No one contested his statement.

-

Serena's schedule had been adjusted so that her last two class periods of the day were reserved for her track concentration. Infinity didn't have an outdoor PE area the way Azabu had; instead, she reported to the building's third floor, which housed an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a dojo area where Lita would be spending her afternoons, a weightlifting room, and an indoor track.

A woman in a white coat was waiting outside the girls' locker room. She smiled at Serena when she spotted her.

"Miss Tsukino," she said. "I'm Nurse Villuy. We'll be conducting a short physical before you begin today."

Serena vaguely remembered seeing the permission form for this amidst the stack of papers her parents had signed for her enrollment at Infinity. She followed the nurse to the clinic area nestled in a corner beyond the locker rooms. There she was weighed, measured, poked, and prodded, among other rather uncomfortable things that she had always heard that athletes had to do and thanked her lucky stars she was exempt from as a non-athlete. Nurse Villuy was very kind and efficient with the whole thing, though, and within fifteen minutes, Serena had been sent back to the locker room.

She changed into the workout pants and shirt that were waiting in the locker she had been assigned and braided her pigtails, looping them around her head the way that Darien had once done to keep her from tripping, although he had had a rose to put in it, and she only had bobby pins. Then, spotting a sign with an arrow that read "Track," she followed it and walked out the doorway.

Where she collided with someone.

From the spot her nose hit – just above a jutting collarbone – she knew immediately who it was, even before her gasp inhaled the familiar smell of his soap. Rubbing her nose, she looked up and saw Darien blinking down at her with surprise, then a smirk, curving his features.

She scowled at him for nostalgia's sake. How well she could remember when they last had gym together! Only now did she realize how much she had missed it.

He grinned back and patted her hair. She felt something slide through the braids, holding them in place, and lifted her hand to finger the velvety petals of the flower nestled there.

She tilted her head wryly to cover the way her heart had begun to beat fast. "Well. Just add Coach Etoukou, and this'll be just like old times!"

"TSUKINOANDSHIELDS!"

Darien and Serena's eyes both went wide. Serena pinched herself just above the spot on her arm that the nurse had pricked with a needle. But the pinch didn't get rid of the mustachioed man clomping across the cavernous gymnasium toward them.

Someone had forced Coach Etoukou out of his ubiquitous shorts and t-shirt and squeezed him into a collared shirt and slacks, and his balding head looked rather flat on top without a baseball cap, but he was still wearing a stopwatch and whistle around his neck and holding a clipboard.

He cackled as he saw their expressions. "Thought you'd escaped our contract, didn't you?"

"Yes," said Darien with a blunt immediacy that earned him a reproachful noise from Serena. "What are you doing here?"

"I'll tell you while you run." Coach glanced down at his stopwatch. Serena glanced down and saw that she and Darien were already standing in a lane of the track that had been painted in white paint along the rough floor. "Ten laps to warm up! Ready, set, go!"

Serena and Darien looked at each other.

"Go, I said!" Coach waved an arm crazily as though they were a pair of pigeons he was trying to frighten away.

Serena sighed and broke into a half-hearted jog. Darien sighed even louder and followed suit.

"You call that running? I've seen fat American tourists run faster than that!" Coach bellowed.

Obligingly, Serena picked up the pace until she was running, still at a leisurely pace for her. Again, Darien followed her lead.

"FASTER!" bellowed the coach, and Serena flinched forward into her usual running-speed like an antelope frightened by a lion's roar. Darien shook his head and kept up.

"That's better," shouted Coach so that they could hear them from where he was at the opposite end of the track.

He waited until they had done two laps before he began to holler his story at them as they huffed and puffed. "Lucky break for me!" he shouted. "Infinity's old track coach quit during the holidays without giving notice! They offered the job to me before Azabu blew up – " And here his shouting became conspiratorial in tone, which made Darien roll his eyes. " – but I couldn't stand to take it if it meant leaving you two."

"Lucky us," panted Serena.

"Then Azabu blew up, and you two came here, and I jumped to get the job!" Coach concluded. He sighed happily. "It's almost like the gods of high school athletics are looking out for me."

"Coach," asked Serena breathlessly when they had finally finished their ten laps. She was looking around at the very large, very empty space that housed the indoor track. "Don't you have any other students…?"

"A few." Coach waved his clipboard dismissively. "One's still training in Colorado or something, and the others are at a meet. They'll be back next week. But they don't matter. You two are the one who are gonna take the world by storm." He rubbed his hands together. "Now let's start some drills!"

-

A/N: If anything particularly confused you, please tell me in your review! Same goes for anything you particularly liked!


	29. Chapter 29

Summary: How do you foresee a separate stream of time? It branches off at one event, one thought, among trillions. Moon and Mask confront their pasts, their futures, and the sins that brought them together in this sequel to Subject to Change by EightofSwords.

**A/N:** We ALMOST made January. But February is a much more romantic month, don't you think? Even if it is filled with freaking exams and projects…grumble…

Thanks to all you incredible reviewers, especially mychakk, Midnight, Daydreamishly, Elen-Di, Dawn of Aurora, Rakusa and especially Rundaemon, who may have saved the story from being taken off by alerting me and Jade to ffdotnet regulations!

After this chapter, three to four more are left.

Please note that there is a LANGUAGE and GORE warning for this chapter. Also, there was a Kobayashi mentioned at Azabu High in Season 1. Please disregard this; I have decided to use his character at Infinity instead. Also, an astronomical fact that might make part of this chapter clearer: the Milky Way galaxy consists of four main arms. Our solar system is located in a minor arm called the Orion Spur, and the closest main arm to it is the Carina Arm.

There are no words to express how much I owe to Jade. All 300,000-plus words of this fic are purely the result of her encouragement and help, even amidst all the huge amounts of work she does. Please send her a shout out of thanks!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Sailor Moon or any proper nouns.

Updated Timeline (Chapters 26-28):

132. In the present, Rini dreamed about her last memory of Asanuma before she went to the past. He had been out fighting, using the last of his energy and then his life-force to fight Black Moon youma. Rini asked him if her parents would leave the war with Chaos to come save them and begged him to call them. When he refused, she screamed at him and involuntarily used her powers to control his body to make him leave the room.

133. Rubeus stopped the Asanuma from the future from killing himself and made a deal with him. Asanuma was all but dead, preserved only by Rubeus keeping him in the phoenix-blood ruby, in which time stops. He makes a blood oath with Rubeus: Asanuma would be used as bait to lure in Rini and Darien so that Darien will kill Wiseman, and in exchange, Rubeus would help them fight Wiseman and protect Rini.

134. Darien visited Serena at night to bring her the harder-than-diamond crystal sword that he and Mikai had made. Serena thought that the encounter was a dream and allowed herself to snuggle with him.

135. Darien went to Elysion, where he and Helios discussed how he had regained his sight and why it had not returned earlier. Helios spoke of royals who, in the past, had deprived themselves of vision in order to strengthen their other senses. They wondered whether the Golden Crystal is sentient and what role Sailor Mercury played in returning Darien's sight – and in suppressing his and the others' flash-forms.

136. On their way to Lita's apartment to talk about throwing a New Year's party, Serena and Rini discussed what love is. Serena assured Rini that her Asanuma in the future would still love her when she returned and promised her that if he didn't, Serena's future self would take care of her.

137. Rei and Hotaru camped out for a rest on their way to the airport, but neither of them slept. Rei discovered that some of her spirit-fire had burned Hotaru's leg, and when she treated them, discovered many other scars on her body. It softened Rei toward the girl.

138. Mikai found out that Rini was Darien's daughter from the future. Serena realized that she _hadn't_ been dreaming when Darien came to her window the night before. This realization made her flee, but Darien followed her home to make sure she wasn't planning to avoid him again. Serena agreed not to, but warned him that teenage girls have hyperactive imaginations.

139. Three days later, during last-minute preparations for the party, Asanuma discovered a newspaper article about a suspected youma corpse found in Tokyo Bay. Suspecting that Rei may have been the one to kill the youma, he went immediately to Chiyoda to interrogate her father.

140. After Pluto had nearly submerged Mercury's flash-form, Mercury had taken off for the time plane to get to the Garnet Orb before Pluto could get to her and finish the job. She suspected that Pluto had somehow, in the last thousand years, succumbed to insanity and knew that she had to stop Pluto from getting the three talismans and awakening Saturn and then Princess Serenity.

141. Pluto caught up to Mercury, but Mercury managed to get into the underground chamber in the heart of the time plane where the Garnet Orb and the Fountain of the Past were housed. Mercury got the talisman, but was horrified when she saw that the Fountain of the Past had begun to leak.

142. Senator Hino initially mistook Asanuma, who was covered in flames, for Rei, and nearly shot him with a gun that he had hidden in his pillows. Asanuma, enraged, made Hino tell him about Rei showing up the day after Christmas to take away Tomoe Hotaru, the girl Hino had employed to impersonate her. Hino also told him about the other Senshi who was present, whom Asanuma suspected must be Mercury.

143. Emerald ruins Rubeus' plans when she releases all of his youma, plus some of her own, into Tokyo on New Year's Eve, meaning that the prince, Senshi, and Shittenou would split up to fight them. In the Azabu High cafeteria, Rubeus released Future Asanuma from the ruby.

144. At the party, Rini sensed Asanuma's presence immediately. She took off for it, followed by Buji and Serena. Unconsciously, her desire to stop them both from following her spilled into Buji, controlling him and making him stop Serena from following. Lita showed up, immobilizing Buji, and Serena kept after Rini.

145. With Buji unconscious, Mikai, Motoki, and Lita split up to go after the youma, while Darien went after Rini and Serena.

146. Rini's panic to get to Asanuma resulted in her sudden ability to transform into animals like Darien; in the form of a giant cat, she tore through the city. She attacked Rubeus and was only stopped from killing him when the Asanuma from the future intervened, yanking her off Rubeus. Rini's human mind returned to her; she realized that Asanuma had barely any life-force left, he was dying.

147. When Rubeus, attempting to preserve the last of Asanuma's life-force, tried to put him back into the ruby, Rini clawed at him. Sailor Moon grabbed her from behind – then the Wiseman appeared.

148. It took all of Moon's strength to keep Rini from being sucked into the Wiseman's black hole-like pull. The attacks she aimed at him bounced off. The Wiseman prepared to kill Rubeus and Future Asanuma.

149. Pluto told Mercury that she could not have known that her actions in the past would create a totally separate stream of time, resulting in the puddle that has leaked from the Fountain of the Past. She told Mercury not to fault her for trying to help her queen. Mercury told her that the Senshi of Pluto are meant to serve kingdoms, not queens. Pluto was about to kill Mercury…

150. Tuxedo Mask burst into the cafeteria, blocking the Wiseman's power with the Golden Crystal's. Rini screamed for him to heal Asanuma. Rubeus seized Rini to keep her from being sucked into the Wiseman's power as Mask and Moon fought.

151. Rini burned Rubes with her power, forcing him to release her. The Wiseman's power sucked her in – until the dying Future Asanuma shot a crystal from his spot on the floor. It impaled Rini to the wall, stopping her from flying straight to the Wiseman. Asanuma, crying, apologized and told her he loved her. Then he began to crawl toward Tuxedo Mask.

152. Future Asanuma used the last of his life-force to create a barrier around himself and Mask, breaking his blood oath to Rubeus by failing to fight with him, so that he could tell Darien that his future self was coming to get Rini for Chaos. Then Future Asanuma died.

153. Rini tried to grab at Asanuma's soul to put it back into his body, and she nearly caught it. But it slid from her fingers and away. In her anguish, she lost control of her power and went supernova.

154. Rei, in the airport, sensed Asanuma's death. She forced herself not to go back, to try to save him. Then she felt the explosion of power from Rini. Hotaru began to awaken as Sailor Saturn…

155. …when Pluto saw the Garnet Orb pulsing, she teleported away, leaving Mercury alive. Mercury knew that the orb's pulsing meant Saturn was awakening. Ami suddenly made her presence known inside Mercury for the first time in forever, but Pluto returned and took Mercury to Tokyo so that she would lead Pluto to Saturn,

156. Mercury pointed in the wrong direction and took off as Pluto glanced that way. Pluto caught on and lifted her staff to freeze Mercury's body in time. Ami, inside Mercury, seized control and made their body teleport – but at the same time, Pluto's attack hit them. The girl's body disappeared with only a shout of "Kentaro-san!"

157. …Hotaru, after a moment and a disappointed expression, returned to herself with no recollection of having nearly become Sailor Saturn. Rei, shaken, dragged them to their plane terminal.

158. Mask and Moon clung together as Rini's explosive power tore through the campus, destroying the buildings. When the light from her explosion faded, everyone has disappeared: the Wiseman, Rubeus, Asanuma, and Rini. Then, suddenly, they sensed a familiar aura.

159. The aura turned out to be Buji, curled around Rini's body in the form of a white dragon.

160. They realized Rini was still breathing, and Mask took her to Elysion to be healed by Helios. Moon and Buji, who was still unconscious but back in a human body, unexpectedly go to Elysion as well as moment later.

161. The present Asanuma returned from Chiyoda, following the Shittenou he sensed to Mikai in Akihabara. Mikai heard Ami's cry of "Kentaro-san!" before the ice communicator in his ear abruptly melted. He took off looking for her, and Asanuma followed suit.

162. Helios told Moon and Mask that Rini's aura was violently exhausted; she was only saved by Buji transferring his own energy to her. Buji and Moon ended up in Elysion because Buji has become Rini's Elysian priest, as Helios is Darien's.

163. Darien commanded Helios to change Buji out of being Rini's priest. When Helios said the he couldn't, Darien pulled out his cane-blade to cut Buji's dragon horns and spikes off so that he would never know what he had become and never have to risk his life. Serena held the boy still in case he woke up.

164. Before Darien could cut, Rini froze him in mid-stop with her powers. She screamed at Darien for letting Asanuma die and not coming for them. Serena told Rini that Darien did come for her. Rini told her that he did this time but that he _doesn't_ (as in, he doesn't in the future). She told them that the Asanuma who died in the cafeteria wasn't their Asanuma (from the present); it was Rini's (from the future).

165. On the Black Moon mother ship, the Wiseman uses his crystal ball to show Prince Diamond and the others how Rubeus helped Asanuma and Rini against him. He accused Rubeus of treason, whom only Sapphire defended. Rubeus tried to ask his beloved Prince Diamond to spare his Four Sisters, but the Wiseman incinerated all four of them, and then Rubeus as well.

166. When Buji woke up in Elysion, Darien tried to hypnotize him to take away his memories of what he had turned into, but Rini told them that if Buji was deprived of his powers, she would die. They discover that Buji's future self appears to Rini in her dreams and was the one who taught her how to transform into plants, which has saved her several times over from the Black Moon's clutches. Darien agreed to let Buji keep his powers so long as he learned only what he needed to teach Rini, not to fight with them against youma.

167. While Mikai continued searching for Ami, Asanuma (the present one) went to meet Darien, Serena, Buji, and Darien. Their intense reactions to seeing him confused him. After Buji and Rini headed home, Serena and Darien told Asanuma what happened to his future self. Asanuma pretended not to be very bothered by it and insisted that they all start searching for Rini. When Lita and Motoki show up, his expression bound Serena and Darien not to tell them about his future self's fate.

168. Serena sensed that whatever Future Asanuma had told Darien was bothering him greatly. She holds the rope between them and does not let go, even as they split up to search the nearby wards for any sign of Ami.

169. Rini fainted on the way home, and Buji took her and himself back to Elysion, where Helios began to teach him in the ways of Elysian priests.

170. Rini's power blast reached Lanai as she was hurtling through space from her meeting with the High Senshi back to Earth. She quickened her speed.

171. After searching the Mizuno apartment, Mikai confronted Ami's mother at the hospital. He ordered her to call him if she saw any signs that Ami had returned to their apartment.

172. After a night of searching, the gang took a break. Darien brought Buji and Rini back from Elysion. Rini collapsed asleep into Serena's arms, and Asanuma walked Buji home. On their walk, Asanuma said that he would train Buji to fight in exchange for Buji's promise to protect Rini.

173. Serena tried to keep Rini asleep despite her fiercely worried parents, but Rini woke up as she was tucking her in. She told Serena that she didn't want to be able to control people anymore. Serena promised to teach her how to use her powers so that she could control them.

174. Darien came to Serena's window, so disturbed by what the future Asanuma had told him that he could barely keep his body from transforming into animal features. Serena calmed him down, hugging him tightly. Then she picked up on the conflicted thoughts that were spilling from his mind, images of how Rini might have to use her tremendous powers to do to him if he turned to Chaos. She told him to stop. Darien relayed to her his memories of Helios's prophecy that the Terran prince would become one of Chaos' warriors and of what future Asanuma had told him: his future self was coming to get Rini for Chaos. In response, Serena swore to him that she wouldn't let his future self do any of these things.

175. Chasing and fighting Mercury drained Pluto immensely. Coupled with the deterioration her body was already facing as punishment for her violations of Chronos' Laws, it was enough to drive her unconscious as she returned to the time plane after Mercury/Ami escaped. She sank into memories of Queen Selenity's death, the queen's reaction to finding out that Pluto had given a Time Key to the High Senshi, and the promise Pluto had made to her to atone for her sin: a vow to give the princess another chance at life.

176. When Serena awoke the next morning, Ikuko accepted the explanation that she and Rini had been caught in a youma attack and Rini's energy drained. They left Rini to sleep, but, worried by Rini's pallor, Serena called Darien and asked him to take her to Elysion to heal faster. The Tsukinos then invited Lita over.

177. With Rubeus and the Sisters dead, Emerald was put in charge of planet side operations to obtain energy and the princess. She went through Bertie's data files to find any weaknesses that the Senshi or Shittenou might have. She found copious amounts of data on transforming youma into humans along with footage of a white-haired man who appeared to have been experimenting on that very topic.

178. As Darien took Rini to Elysion, he struggled to understand why he had saved her instead of his best friend, Asanuma. He realized, to his consternation, that he had grown to feel much more strongly about Rini than he had ever wanted to.

179. Darien also tried to think of why Rini lived with Asanuma, and not her parents, in the future. He hypothesized that she, a tremendously powerful being, had been born so that when he went to Chaos' side, she would be able to destroy him. With this in mind, he and Helios began training Rini to use the Golden Crystal.

180. Although they expected to be relocated to Juuban High School until Azabu could be rebuilt, the whole gang was instead invited to attend the prestigious Infinity Academy. Asanuma and Mikai discussed the unlikeliness of this event before Asanuma went to begin Buji's first training session.

181. The two boys run into Rini and Serena, also training at the park – with Darien. Darien went after Asanuma, incensed that he disobeyed his edict not to teach Buji how to fight. Only when Asanuma asked if Darien was going to hypnotize them both like Endymion would have did Darien back off. Before he and Buji left, Asanuma told Rini to come see him when she wanted to learn to use fire.

182. The next day, Darien trained Buji in Elysion while Serena and Asanuma picked up their new uniforms at the mall. Serena pointed out that just by being in the present, Rini has changed the future, and she says with certainty that the future will be different than what they know it to be now.

183. On their first day of school, the gang is treated rather contemptuously by the Infinity students but warmly by the principal, Kaori Knight. They are each given a special focus track: Lita in martial arts with a previous Olympic medal-winner for a teacher, Motoki in culinary arts with the chef at Infinity (because Infinity has a chef, not lunch ladies), and Serena and Darien in track running. Briefly, Serena wondered how their lives were going to change when Darien, Motoki, and Asanuma graduated.

184. That afternoon, Mikai and Serena went to an abandoned subway line to see if Ami had ended up there. They discussed Darien's time at and after the orphanage. Serena imaged what Rini could have been like if she hadn't had Asanuma to raise her and had instead grown up alone like Darien.

185. Mikai had Serena pray briefly with him about mutant hoboes and Ninja Turtles before they set off to search.

186. Lita and Rini began the first stages of hand-to-hand training in Darien's apartment with his punching bag. When Darien returned from checking on Motoki's dad, whose condition had begun to worsen, Lita left to go see him, leaving Rini and Darien alone. After initial awkwardness, their conversation became one like the ones he held with his friends, and Rini tried not to feel pleased.

187. Serena and Mikai didn't find Ami in the abandoned subway, but they did find a human who felt like a youma. It was clearly terrified and struggling to run, but before they could do anything to help it, a true youma appeared. It destroyed the human youma, and only Sailor Moon's Twilight Flash prevented herself and Mikai from being atomized by the same attack. The youma vanished.

188. As they discussed the encounter the next day, Asanuma told the gang about the article he'd seen about a youma corpse. They hypothesized that it was another human youma and that they must be experiments by the Black Moon.

189. That day, before beginning her track training, Serena submitted to a physical by Infinity's school nurse. Afterward, she dressed out and went to the indoor track – where she ran into Darien. They then encountered Coach Etoukou, who was hired after the past track coach unexpectedly resigned in December. He is now their new coach – i.e., slave driver.

-

-

**Subject to Change**

Season 2

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Gordian Knot

-

-

_New Year's Day_

The footage from Bertie's recording crystal had conveniently noted the coordinates of the laboratory where the white-haired scientist was carrying out his experiments. Emerald had copied the coordinates into her own crystal-reader before teleporting to them.

It was immediately evident to Emerald, from the pressure she could feel behind the white walls around her, that the laboratory was underground. Probably only two to three stories underground, she judged, glancing around. Immediately behind her was a door, which opened onto a set of white stairs led up, probably to above ground.

Before her was something much more interesting. A long and wide white hallway. Emerald clicked quietly down the spotless white linoleum in her black boots.

Her eyes narrowed as she realized that on either side of her were, not walls, but windows. Reinforced clear windows that began at the height of her waist and stretched to the ceiling, looking in on small rooms that seemed to be about two meters long by two meters wide.

And inside these rooms were – Emerald's pulse quickened with excitement – human youma.

The first few that she passed had been motionless on cots. Their faces, from what Emerald could see of them, were puckered in, like caricatures of people who had tasted very sour lemons.

There were clipboards attached to each of the padlocked doors that led into the rooms, and on them, Emerald could see the words neatly written: _20 mL plasma from black youma._

She realized that, somehow, these humans had been crossed with their faceless drone youma that were used to collect energy.

And their bodies, it was obvious, had not reacted well to it.

But the creatures Emerald saw in the next three rooms were in an even more gruesome condition.

The clipboards on their doors informed her that these humans had been combined with normal-level youma. Their bodies were in various states of rejection. One had growths calcifying inside and around his mouth and beginning to encase his arm and leg joints. Another, a female, was still alive, for she was moving, but she looked like a corpse from which the flesh had begun to slip, the flesh hanging from her fingers like rubbery gloves as she held them to her eyes to keep the eyeballs in their sockets. The last one had red-stained gauze bandages taped around his lumpy abdomen but nothing else apparently wrong with him. Emerald leaned toward the clipboard to see what youma he had been crossed with and saw the words _arachnoid youma_ written there neatly.

She glanced back at the bandaged man. His eyes were half-lidded, and an IV went into his arm; he was clearly being kept doped up on some very strong morphine sedative.

It was impossible not to think about what might be hidden beneath the gauze and shiver. And it was at this point that a bit of fear began to trickle into Emerald, like a depressant into her bloodstream. Even the Wiseman had been merciful enough to kill that idiot Rubeus quickly. He had not dragged it out, like was being done to these experiments.

Thinking of Rubeus and the Wiseman made her swallow. She refused to meet the same end as that blood demon. Who cared about these humans? It was her life that was going to be on the line if she didn't find a way to defeat the Senshi and Shittenou and get energy and the princess to take back to the future.

A new room caught her attention. There was an intercom beside the door, and at first, it looked as though the room, with its white walls and grid of metal wires suspended slightly above the floor, spanning from wall to wall, looked to empty.

Then motion caught her eye.

There was a cat inside the room.

It was limping slowly toward her, one of its front legs held up as though it was injured. There were little bald patches all over its white fur, as though it had been burnt, including a very obvious bald spot on the front of its head just above its watery blue eyes. It was curiously shaped, rather like the dark moon on her own forehead.

These eyes slid from side to side, not quite focusing on her. One-way glass, Emerald realized as the cat's eyes focused on a spot a little to the left of her. All of this glass must be one-way, but why put a _cat_ in here?

"Tomoe."

Emerald's eyes widened. She took an involuntary step back, her step loud in the silence.

The cat's eyes flicked over, closer to where she was, but not quite. "Please." The hoarse voice was coming out of its moving, whiskered mouth. "No more."

Had the scientist managed to turn humans into _animals_? Or managed to transfer human awareness into them?

Emerald rapped the glass. "What _are_ you?"

The cat flinched back, its tail snapping upright. "Who…"

Then it lurched forward, slapping a clawless paw to the glass. "Leave!" Its eyes flicked blindly through the glass, trying helplessly to see her. "You have to leave! Before – "

"Mr. Artemis." A voice spoke at the same time that Emerald felt something prick her neck. "Please contain yourself."

Emerald spun, but her vision was already going dark. The last thing she heard as she collapsed to the floor was the voice from behind her saying, "No need to worry, Mr. Artemis, she doesn't appear to be one of your precious Senshi."

When Emerald woke up, she was inside one of the very rooms she had been peering into. The scent of vomit, blood, and burned flesh coated the cold air.

She bolted up, intent on escaping the scent that reminded her too much of the refugee camp where she had lived before Diamond found her.

But she found herself strapped down at the elbows, wrists, knees, ankles, and waist by plastic restraints.

"Oh, thorough," she snapped. "Very thorough."

She stretched, trying to get her head close enough to her hands to pull off her gloves with her teeth. But several minutes of exertion produced no result. She threw her head back on the table she was strapped to and shouted, red-faced with frustration, "CHIRAL!"

A void opened in front of her.

Chiral, one of her two right-hand droids, stepped out.

"Mistress." His mouth curved when he saw her. "What _have_ you gotten yourself into?"

"Shut up and get me out," she snapped, flicking her fingers at him threateningly.

He stepped forward, lowering his hands to the restraints at her wrists.

"And not with that electron chain of yours, either," she said as his hands began to glow. "You'll explode us both if it touches my hands."

Chiral nodded obediently.

Just then, a sound came from the door. Emerald's head jerked up. As soon as her hands were free, she was shattering that window into fifty billion pieces –

"Leaving so soon?"

The white-haired doctor walked into the room. Emerald recognized his voice. He was the man who had pricked her with the sedative.

"Chiral," she snarled, and before even she could see, her droid had slammed the man into a wall by his throat.

His long legs dangling half a meter off the ground, the human man blinked. One of his eyes was a cold gold, mechanical perhaps, but even his regular eye did not look shocked. His pupil was small, not dilated, as though he had no sympathetic nervous system response.

"Ah," he said instead, blinking again at her from where Chiral had him pinned to the wall. "I see that you are not quite the unremarkable human I assumed you to be."

"Damn right," Emerald seethed. "What, you thought you'd use me as one of your test subjects?"

He blinked again. "Yes."

Emerald made a high-pitched sound of rage.

"It's difficult to find subjects," he said, almost conversationally, like he was explaining why he didn't have any scones to offer her with afternoon tea. "I have many patients, but most of them have family who would notice if they were gone. And I don't have the strength to take people by force off the streets. How could I not take advantage of a youma woman who had somehow found her way into my lab without me needing to sedate her and transport her here?"

Emerald tossed her hair over her shoulder, not impressed. However, he had called her young, and that was a point in his favor.

Chiral had weakened the plastic restraint at her wrist. With a lazy wrench of her arm, she was able to snap it. She used her free hand to pull the glove from her other hand.

Revealed underneath were the swirling, mottled black death hands that the Wiseman had given her. They stretched, extending and extending, brushing against the restraints at her waist, elbows, wrists and legs.

The plastic collapsed to acrid, steaming puddles as her death hand's fingers touched them.

When all the restraints were disposed of, she sat up, stretched, and swung her legs over the table. She did not put her glove back on.

Instead, as she smirked alluringly at the scientist. Her death hand wandered like a wisp of smoke to his face, hovering there above Chiral's head. He watched it with clinical fascination and not an iota of fear.

"You know," she said, swallowing her annoyance and letting the hand stroke down his white coat lapel. "I think that you and I can help each other."

His eyes left her death hand, almost reluctantly, to glance dispassionately at her. "Oh?"

"Oh, yes," said Emerald.

-

When Michiru Kaioh was five, Mr. and Mrs. Kaioh decided they were going to move with their daughter from their house on the Mediterranean to a new house in Japan.

Michiru, like any child, was so infuriated by this decision, which would take her away from all her friends, that she took violent action. She grabbed the bow of her father's prized Stradivarius and swiped it across the strings.

Her father, already reaching for her to grab her away from his best instrument, froze when he heard it.

Then he lowered his hands, reverently, and told her to do it again.

Michiru, still boiling with rage and not catching on to the fact that what she had done hadn't hurt him the way she'd wanted it to, sawed the bow down the strings again. She shrieked at him, willing the stupid strings to scream her fury at him, too.

Her father ran for his phone to call his agent.

Her fate was sealed that day.

Bribing her with promises of candy and toys, her father began to teach her keys and arpeggios. When the family arrived in Japan, Michiru was not enrolled in a school but instead, given a tutor to work with her in the few hours a day that she was not working with music coaches or her father himself.

She became the dark child prodigy, hidden away by her parents in their house with its soundproofed rooms like a modern-day phantom of the opera. When she cried from the pain of her fingers from practicing over and over, she was told to put the pain into her scales. When she laughed from finally mastering the hated piece that her strings coach had given her, she was told to channel her delight into notes. When she screamed at her parents that she was _sick_ of music and of having people keep their children away from her so they wouldn't distract her from her practicing, she was locked in the soundproofed room with a book of blank scores and told to voice her bitterness through her music.

She did. There was nothing else for her to do. And she became a famous violinist, ten times more known than her father had been, with albums released not only in Japan but internationally. The prestigious Infinity Academy pursued her, promising to nurture her art. Her parents would not hear of her not going, regardless of the fact that it was six hours away from home, and she did not protest.

Michiru had given up, by then, on protesting anything.

She went to Infinity, and between rehearsals and auditions and coaching and concerts, weeks, then months went by without her speaking to her parents. She didn't mind not talking to them so much as the fact that _they_ didn't seem to see this lack of contact as unnatural.

The few phone messages they left on her voicemail encouraged her to keep practicing and not worry about getting back to them; they knew she was busy and didn't want her to get distracted. And maybe if she was homesick, instead of calling them, she should try channeling the emotion into a new score? They were hoping for her to release a new CD soon.

It hurt.

And it hurt more that Michiru wanted to call them and say something – she didn't know whether she wanted to scream at them or to sob to them.

She just wanted to make them realize what she _felt_.

But she didn't.

She stayed just as silent as always, obeying them by not calling, and funneling her pain into notes, and then her anger, her self-hatred, to realize that ten years had passed, she had become an adult instead of a child, and she hadn't changed at all.

The day that she realized just _how much_ she hadn't changed, how silent and spineless she still was, was the day she met Haruka Tennou.

Haruka was dominant and possessive.

Demanding and unignorable.

Open and talkative.

Always surrounded by their classmates, gathered around him as he lounged in his desk, telling stories. He smiled when no one had told a joke. He was always looking into the distance as if he could see something beckoning to him there.

In Haruka Tennou, Michiru saw an image of herself as she could be. Admired by people, graceful, bright and not dark.

She wanted to get close to that self. Wanted to be absorbed into it.

Wanted to be with Haruka Tennou.

That desire didn't change when Michiru found out that Haruka was actually a girl parading in male clothing.

If anything, Michiru only envied her more, admiring Haruka's straightforwardness in telling her, right after their first kiss, that she was actually a girl. Michiru could never have been so brave, so blunt. She would have hidden the secret if it was hers, and agonized over what to do if Haruka ever found out.

But Haruka was as simple and open as Michiru was not. She was as transparent as the wind that she controlled.

At least, that had been what Michiru thought at first.

-

On New Year's Eve night, when Pluto left after bringing Sailor Uranus's flash-form to the surface in Haruka and sending her after Rei, Michiru slid to the floor.

She didn't know how long she lay there, eyes squeezed shut, curled up like a dead leaf. There was no room for the passage of time in her head, only the swirling of fear: what if Haruka _didn't_ come back? what if Sailor Uranus didn't let Haruka take control again? what if…

Only when a huge flash of white aura seared through her senses and her eyelids did Michiru move. She opened her eyes and stared at the living room, lit as brightly by the white aura outside as if an endless flash of lightning had lit the sky.

It made her think of Sailor Jupiter. And Sailor Jupiter made her think of Serena. Of Serena, her eyes bright behind the scars that caged them, grinning at her. _"I never would have thought it of you, but you're a gossip, aren't you, Miss Kaioh?"_

Of the sparkle in Haruka's eyes sometimes as she talked about things Serena had said or done on their "dates."

Michiru pushed herself up on her hands.

Serena would not just lie here and cry if Darien Shields was taken over by his flash form.

She would go after him.

Michiru transformed. Then she began to follow the faint, faint shadow of that foreign Senshi's aura.

It had taken her to Bancho ward. The molecules of water in the air were disturbed, polluted with soot, and warmer than any water vapor in winter had any right to be. Michiru soon saw that it was because the very building that she was approaching – a palatial mansion – had smoke rising from its charred upper floor, yellow-coated firefighters examining it.

There had been a fire. Or a battle.

She found Haruka's body in a bunch of shrubbery near the house. She still wore her Senshi fuku, her hair still Sailor Uranus's white, and she wasn't moving. But the warmth of the water vapor that Michiru could sense around the Senshi's body and being absorbed into her mouth reassured Michiru that Haruka – or rather, right now, Sailor Uranus – was alive.

But she might not be for much longer. Sweat glistened on her face, which was twisted in pain even in unconsciousness.

There were no wounds on her upper body, only streaks of soot. At her legs, which were hidden in shadow and the shrubbery that she had fallen into, Michiru could feel water vapor was collecting and condensing to liquid on one of her leg. That meant that her skin there must be unnaturally hot. Had Rei burned her? Michiru scooted backward to squint at the skin.

Reddish-orange aura edged in black had burned on Haruka's bare leg like a brand.

Michiru stared at it with wide eyes and parted lips. She had seen the burns that Rei's fire made during the few spars that she and Haruka had had with the younger Senshi, but none of them had looked like this. None of them had lasted for longer than a minute before their Senshi healing abilities kicked in.

But Michiru had been staring at the burn on Haruka's leg for at least two minutes already, and it hadn't begun to heal at all. If anything, in that two minutes, Haruka's breathing had begun to get slower and shallower.

Water began to brim in her eyes again. She felt it, hot and familiar, and blurring her vision. She let it blur, squeezing her eyes shut. Her head bowed to Haruka's soft chest, her tears soaking into the bow on her fuku. She felt constricted, squeezed, helpless, as impotent as the times that she was a little girl drawing her bow down her violin with tears running down her cheeks as her parents smiled at her through the window of the recording room. Why couldn't she _do anything?_

The squeezing grew tighter. She choked on the sob in her throat. White spots flashed behind her eyelids like sunlight skittering across an ocean's surface.

And then they faded.

-

When Michiru woke up, there was something warm and hard beneath her cheek. Like the sun-baked beach shore that she used to fall asleep on when she lived with her parents on the Mediterranean. Before she became a prodigy, before she became a Senshi.

Her mind drifted lazily, like she was floating, as she thought about this. The picnic lunches of tuna and tomatoes, the smell of sunscreen, the salty breeze –

Michiru sat up. _Haruka_.

She looked down, eyes cringing against the gray light of daybreak. The belated realization that Haruka's chest was the warm sand she had imagined was swept away by her mad scramble up from the grass to look at Haruka's leg, to feel her pulse, make sure she hadn't died.

Only as she pulled up Haruka's pant leg to see her leg did she realize that Haruka had detransformed. And then, as she stared at Haruka's leg, where the angry glowing burn had been replaced by pale skin marked only with a slightly raised white scar, she realized that Haruka's chest wouldn't have been warm if she was dead.

Michiru threw her arms around Haruka and buried her face into her chest all over again. "You're okay," she whispered, almost laughing. "You're okay!"

Then, just as her proximity to Haruka's body began to stir something in her mind, Haruka moved beneath her.

Michiru looked up to see Haruka's dark blue eyes squinting open.

"Michiru...?" she said blearily. Her eyes met Michiru's and stared into them for a minute, flicking downward, then back up.

Then her eyes shot wide, and she jacknifed up, hands going to Michiru's shoulders and shoving her off. She scrambled backward, half to her feet, putting a hand to a tree to help pull herself up, and stared at Michiru, eyes narrowed.

Alarm filled Michiru. Was Haruka still Uranus? She had thought that the flash-form must be buried again since Haruka wasn't in her fuku anymore and her hair was back to its normal color. But Haruka wouldn't look at her like this, guarded and like she was gearing up for a fight.

"Haruka?" she whispered.

Haruka's shoulders didn't relax. "What did you…" Her dark eyes were searching. "Did you…" She crossed her arms over her chest, uncomfortably.

It was one of Haruka's signature moves. A childish one, one that Michiru often teased her about. Michiru felt relief sigh through her.

"It _is_ you," she said.

"Yeah. Of course. I…" Haruka looked uneasy, crossing her arms more tightly.

Then, as she leaned to one side and her leg shook beneath her, nearly giving out, her eyes went wide. She didn't even seem to notice that she'd fallen or that Michiru had lunged forward to catch her.

She caught the first thing in front of her – Michiru's shoulder – and squeezed so tightly Michiru though it might snap in two. "Shit."

Michiru bit her lip. The only thing that made Haruka lose control like this was thinking about her flash-form. "You remember."

Haruka sank into a crouch. Her hands clenched in her hair. She was shaking. "_Shit_."

"Haruka – "

"I'll kill her." Haruka's voice was muffled by her arms. "The next time she comes. We'll kill her, Michiru."

Michiru didn't say anything. She knew that they would never be able to so much as touch Sailor Pluto, much less kill her.

"I'll kill myself before I let that thing use me again."

Bile burned in Michiru's throat. "Ruka–"

"I'll kill us both," Haruka muttered.

"Haruka," Michiru breathed, eyes round with horror. "_Stop_!"

Haruka's hands fell from their death-grip in her hair. She swiveled her head up to glare poison at Michiru. As she watched her, the poison dripped into a hateful smirk. "What? You like being Neptune's bitch, _Michiru-ko_?"

Michiru's heart stumbled and fell. It felt scraped, like Haruka had just grabbed it out of her chest and dragged it down rough pavement. To call her that name, her special name for her, with that horrible mocking smile…

"You know I don't," she said, her voice so tight that it came out a snap.

"Well, then." Haruka stood. She grabbed a handful of Michiru's trailing, leaf-filled hair, and yanked her toward her with it.

Michiru caught herself, sure that Haruka was going to kiss her. They had kissed before, but she didn't want Haruka to kiss her now, when she was venomous with anger and hatred.

But Haruka didn't kiss her. Just gripped Michiru's hair, breathing harshly, and stared hard into her eyes, centimeters away.

"Do you want to be free?" she said. Her voice was so low it thrummed in Michiru's spine. The anger hadn't left it, but there was a fierceness in it now that overshadowed everything else.

Michiru searched Haruka's face. There was an intensity in Haruka's burning dark eyes that Michiru wanted to be hers. "Yes," she whispered.

Haruka's hand came up to her cheek. Cradled it. "If Pluto can't get to Saturn, she won't wake the princess up."

Michiru leaned into Haruka's touch. "Yes."

"So we'll kill Saturn."

Michiru's jaw tensed against Haruka's hand. Then, seeing the flicker of Haruka's dark eyes, she forced her face to relax again. "Free," she breathed, as though reminding herself.

"Saturn's with Rei," Haruka whispered back, leaning in to put her forehead to Michiru's. "And we know how to get to Rei."

Michiru let her eyelids flutter shut. "The Shittenou."

"Yes." Haruka kissed her, then pulled away. "Come on."

Michiru held onto Haruka's hand tightly as she limped through the thick shrubbery . As their breath rose in white clouds beneath the pink-streaked gray sky, she did not dare to voice the thought that had struck her.

That she was pretty sure Neptune's flash-form had taken over her body to save Haruka's life.

-

_Present Day:_

Several days had passed since Serena and Mikai encountered the human youma in the subway. No more youma had appeared since then, but Serena knew this didn't mean a thing. Or rather, it did mean something: when the youma attacks resumed, the youma would most likely be more frequent and more dangerous than ever.

The hairs on the back of her neck had been on end non-stop the past few days, the way they usually were when she sensed a youma approaching. The sensation never flared into a full-fledged youma presence. Still, it was enough to make her feel as though at any moment, a youma would step out of a void and begin attacking somewhere.

Serena did not share this feeling with anyone. But if the way that Darien kept rubbing the back of his neck and glancing around was any indication, he was experiencing the same sensation.

The look in his eyes reminded her very much of a year ago, when they had been waiting for the Dark Kingdom to attack. He'd had the same half-panicked, half-resigned look crawling in his eyes when they'd sat at the mall food court, after she had found him staring at a coffin store.

But things were different now than they had been then, Serena told herself. There were six of them to fight instead of three – eight of them, actually, if she counted Buji and Helios, which she knew Darien wouldn't agree with. And Darien had the Golden Crystal's power now. Not to mention that her own powers were much greater now than they had been.

So why did she still feel so anxious?

-

"Breathe in," said Helios. His eyes were closed.

Darien watched Buji inhale slowly. The deep breathing was part of the concentration exercises that Helios had begun as part of Buji's training to be an Elysian priest. Darien wasn't exactly sure what sort of things an Elysian priest did that would require Buji to be able to meditate. As far as he had seen, Helios didn't seem to do much more than listen to the wind, water flowers, and occasionally transform into a unicorn. Perhaps Helios was just preparing Buji to be very bored for the rest of his life.

In any case, Darien had bowed out and given the priest full reign over Buji's Elysian training. He was rather pleased with it, in fact, since being able to breathe deeply was on the opposite end of the spectrum from the dangerous activities he wanted Buji kept far away from.

"Breathe out."

Buji exhaled. His hands trembled a little where they were placed on his knees.

"In."

Buji began to breathe in. Halfway through, his mouth snapped shut, and his eyes snapped open to glare at Darien. "This is boring!"

Darien raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him.

"How is this supposed to help anyone?" Buji demanded. He looked at Helios, who said nothing, just looked a little hurt, then back at Darien again, glaring. "All I'm doing is breathing! I can't save anyone by BREATHING! Why can't I learn to do stuff like Rini?"

"Because you don't have the ability to, for one thing," said Darien bluntly.

Part of the Senshi and Shittenou's new routine included making time to train Rini and Buji. Most of the time, while Helios trained Buji, Darien worked with Rini, perfecting her control with the Golden Crystal. She hadn't completely mastered summoning water from the air yet, but he'd already started teaching her how to accelerate vegetative growth.

The only reason she wasn't here in Elysion with them today was because it was a Tuesday. He and Serena had decided that Serena would work with Rini on Tuesday nights to teach her how to use her power not to manipulate her surroundings, as Darien was teaching her to do, but to release it as pure energy, the way Sailor Moon's Twilight Flash attack allowed her to do and the way that Rini had, uncontrollably, done on New Year's Eve.

"I don't have…the ability?" Buji said. He looked at Helios. "But…"

Darien took advantage of his distraction to casually wave his arm.

A spray of water from a pond that Rini had laboriously summoned the night before rose up and splashed toward Buji.

Buji ducked, and the water sailed over his head to splash into the grass.

"Hey!" he shouted, wheeling about to glare at Darien.

"Would you have been able to dodge that so easily if you hadn't been training?" Darien asked idly.

"Not if I hadn't been training with Asanuma!" retorted Buji. "He's the only one who teaches me anything useful!"

Darien's lips curved downward. He still didn't like that Asanuma was teaching Buji how to fight. And Asanuma spent far more time training Buji than Helios – who could only train him at night and only for a few hours, because the boy needed _real_ sleep – did. The blond Shittenou took full advantage of the fact that Mayuko, at a month away from her February 14 due date, was too tired and hormonal to say no to anyone who offered to take her rambunctious second-grader off her hands for a while. He picked Buji up from school every day, spending the afternoons using the makeshift archery range that he had made in his backyard or "sparring."

Darien had a feeling that the sparring was probably based more off of moves that Asanuma had seen in _Naruto_ episodes than any actual katas, so he hadn't kicked up too big a fuss. However, it was impossible to deny that Buji had shown some excellent reflexes just now.

He frowned, and he was still frowning about an hour later, when he returned to Elysion from patrolling Minato Ward's streets – it was his turn to keep an eye out for any sign of youma, Rei, or Ami that night – and said that it was time for Buji to stop training and get some actual sleep.

"Why can't I patrol with you?" said Buji, giving him a defiant look.

"Because I'm not on patrol anymore, for one thing," said Darien. Lita had the shift from one o'clock a.m. until school started, at which time Mikai's shift would begin. The older man didn't go out and roam the streets like the others did. Instead, he kept a live news feed and illegal police radio on next to his computers while he research, so he could hear if any attacks were reported and act accordingly. "Come on."

Buji grumbled, but squeezed his eyes shut, and a waver of his body later, he disappeared from Elysion.

Darien looked at Helios. "How's he doing?"

The priest smiled, rubbing his back. "He is very active."

Darien could recognize a sidestepping of a question when he heard it. He smiled, a little, and clasped Helios's shoulder for a moment, trying to convey that he was grateful to the priest for being patient with Buji.

Helios smiled up at him, his shoulder straightening under Darien's hand. Darien smiled back, thinking of how proud Serena would be if she could see this happening, him acting kind and like a human being to someone for once.

Then he, too, faded from Elysion, reappearing beside Buji's bed to make sure the boy's soul had actually returned to his body, and then, when he saw him sleeping peacefully, back to his own apartment to fall into a deep sleep on his unmade bed.

-

"I've found fourteen males that have been missing since October whose build could match that human youma Serena and I encountered on the subway." Mikai's voice was brusque and clinical as it came through the Darien's cell phone speaker the next day.

Motoki, in the passenger seat of Darien's car as the Senshi and Shittenou made their morning commute to Infinity Academy, silently angled the phone so that Asanuma, Lita, and Serena could hear Mikai from where they sat smushed together in the backseat.

"But those fourteen were from Juuban alone," Mikai continued. "There's still the other wards to consider."

"Fourteen from Juuban _alone_?" Lita echoed in disbelief. "Is that normal?"

"Nope," said Mikai. "From what I can tell, it's the highest missing person count that we've had since that big tsunami a few years back."

Serena shivered in the backseat, looping an arm through Lita's tense arm and Asanuma's warm one on either side of her. The heater in Darien's car hadn't started yet, but Asanuma's arm, probably because of his fire powers, felt like a warm loaf of French bread that had come straight out of the oven.

Her stomach growled at the thought of French bread. Lita chuckled beside her, and Serena shot her a sheepish grin. Then she chattered, "W-what are you g-going to do n-next, M-Mikai?"

"I'm gonna dig deeper," was his reply. "Look at missing females since October too. If I can find something in the files that they all have in common – like they were all last seen in Bancho or something – we might be able to figure out where or how the Black Moon's grabbing people."

"Mikai-san, are you _sure_ you have time for all this?" Motoki's forehead was creased. "I mean, you've got a job. We've just got school. You should give us the information and let us do the searching."

"Nope." Mikai's voice was firm. "Maybe Dare didn't tell you guys, but I own that garage. I can take as much time off as I want. I'll work on this stuff. You guys focus on the kids."

-

Even with Mikai taking care of researching, finding time to focus on the kids became increasingly difficult as the second week of January began. Just as Senshi business had begun to require more time and effort, so too, suddenly, did their Infinity electives.

For their athletic teams, for example, Lita, Darien, and Serena were required to participate in after-school practices and meets. And as part of his classes with Chef Kitamura, Motoki had to work part-time as an assistant at Kitamura's catering business after school.

Only Asanuma, who had been placed in an advanced art class that he apparently skipped most days, was able to keep up a daily schedule of working with Buji, patrolling, fighting youma, and keeping in contact with Mikai about his missing persons findings.

He was also able, apparently, to keep an eye on the rest of them.

"What happened to you?" he demanded crabbily at lunch that Thursday, seeing bandages on Motoki's fingers.

"I cut myself while we were slicing daikon." Motoki looked sheepish. "I didn't check the knife before I started using it. Someone who was greasing the turkey must have used it without washing their hands, because the handle was all slippery."

At Asanuma's look, he waved a hand. "Don't worry. It's probably all healed by now anyway. You know how fast we knit up now."

"Make sure you keep bandages on anyway so no one notices how quickly it's healed," Lita said, beating Darien to the punch.

When Motoki didn't say anything, just smiled blandly at her and kept sipping his soup, she said, a little loudly, "I wondered why you were wearing that shirt. You got blood on your uniform shirt?"

"How much did you bleed?" demanded Asanuma.

"Not a lot," Motoki said quietly. "Kitamura-sensei wouldn't let me make food with blood on my shirt, is all." He brightened, smiling at Asanuma. "Actually, Kitamura-sensei was really nice about it. I thought he was going to bawl me out for not checking the knife, but he fussed more about me being hurt instead. He made me go to the clinic right away and cleaned up the blood himself."

"They're probably afraid of parents suing them," Lita told him. "Shishou was the same way last week when we were sparring and he punched me in the nose. He sent me straight to the clinic to make sure it wasn't broken and cleaned up the blood from the mat instead of letting me do it."

She sniffed, glancing at Motoki. Serena, smiling at the thought that someone actually being able to get past her guard and managing to punch her probably bothered Lita more than the actual pain of the punch, failed to notice.

For Darien, getting to eat lunch together was almost like a return to the pre-Kisenian days, before they had all started eating apart. Lita and Asanuma bickered, with Darien joining in when he was provoked – which was often – and Serena enjoyed the endless gourmet food from the Infinity cafeteria (although Serena missed the corn dogs that had always been served on Fridays at Azabu's cafeteria). They all traded food and insults, and a few times, between serious conversations about patrols or Ami and Rei, Serena and Lita huddled together on one side of the table to read manga that their jam-packed schedules prevented them from getting to read at any other time.

Serena declared this their "Boys leave us alone unless they want knuckle sandwiches" time and ignored any attempts at conversation by Asanuma and Darien, but Darien enjoyed it anyway. Serena was fun to watch when she was reading: her eyebrows would raise and lower, sometimes she would pout or bite her lip, and sometimes she let out wistful, happy little sighs. It was a little more than he could take, honestly, and almost more than he could bear to sit there, arms propped on the table instead of reaching across to Serena and pulling her to him.

Track class and practices presented just as much difficulty. Serena, almost certainly because of her promise to keep him from going to Chaos, was displaying zero discomfort around him. Instead, she was acting the same way she had before they had before Kisenian attacked and before they found out about prophecies and soul mates. After she emerged from the girls' changing room in the gym each day, she tilted her head toward him, presenting it to be braided.

"I should start charging you for this," he said one day as he separated one of her thick streamers of hair into three parts. As usual, the strands clung to his fingertips in silken ripples, as though charged with a faint electricity.

"Ahem," said Serena, tilting her head backward to blink up at him. "I remember a day when you said you ENJOYED playing with my hair."

Darien remembered that day, too. He tilted his head down, his bangs brushing her nose. "I was on painkillers."

"Oooh, I'll put you on painkillers!" Serena yanked her head back down, facing forward. He laughed and kept braiding.

This daily ritual of him braiding her hair, more than anything else, brought him warmth. The sheer domesticity of it reminded him of that brief idyllic period he had spent living at her house, doing homework and grocery shopping and making dinner together.

Being a family together.

-

Sapphire had lost track of the number of times that he had gone to his brother's quarters and found them empty. He knew, as he stopped at the entrance portal today and let the security device scan his retina, that today would likely be no different.

And he was right. As the metal door retracted into the bulkhead, opening the portal for him, an empty, unlit sitting chamber was revealed.

But something would be different today. Today, instead of turning and leaving, Sapphire seated himself in one of the chairs in the middle of the room.

And he waited.

In the darkness of the chamber, deep inside the belly of the ship, there was no way to tell the passing of time. Sapphire could have taken his chronometer from his pocket and glanced at its glowing numbers.

But he did not. Time did not matter. If he had to wait ten years for his brother to come, he would wait ten years. Things could not continue as they were.

A soft breath of air displaced the silence. A portal swirled into existence before Sapphire.

Diamond stepped through.

Rather than moving, Sapphire watched his brother for a moment. He noted the weariness of his tread as he approached the door at the other end of the sitting chamber, the door to his sleeping space.

Before he could get to it, Sapphire rose and touched a finger to the light panel on the wall.

Diamond drew up short, pivoting. "Blast it, Sapphire!"

His voice was tight. It trembled, less angry than weary.

Sapphire stepped aside, leaving the chair in which he had been sitting vacant for his brother.

Diamond sat in it. "I know what you've come for."

"Do you?"

"You're not the only one who can read minds." Diamond didn't slump in the chair. He sat perfectly straight, as their father always had. "When you have that look on your face, I can read yours."

"My face has the same look it always has."

"You always want the same thing." Diamond held his gaze for a moment. Then he let his eyes close, tiredly. His aura was faint, more of a vague mist in the air than a glow.

Sapphire moved to the wall, leaning against it. "Shall I get to my knees and beg? I will, if it will end this."

Diamond's eyes opened. "My brother will bow to no man," he said, in that fierce way he had of making blood rush and pride swirl and fealty be sworn.

Sapphire was not immune to these effects. But he knew his loyalty must take a different form than blind obedience. He was the only one who might be able to make his brother see sense.

"I appreciate your determination to protect my dignity, but I would rather preserve our lives, Diamond," he said. "Do not look for her anymore. It drains too much of your energy."

"Don't worry about my energy," said Diamond sharply. "I have more strength than I once did."

Sapphire said nothing. It would be counterproductive to point out that Diamond's new strength was not his own, but the Wiseman's. Diamond would only be aggravated.

"I will find her soon," Diamond said, leaning back into his chair. "Don't worry, Sapphire."

"I will worry, Diamond," Sapphire said tightly. "I am your brother, and this princess is dangerous. You have been so busy scouring the planet for her that you have not observed even one of our followers' battles with the Senshi. You let the Wiseman kill Rubeus and the Sisters, you let Emerald accept those death hands from him, and now it seems as though you do not even remember our true purpose – "

"Our true purpose?" Diamond's eyes were narrowed. He stood up. "She _is_ our true purpose, you fool. You think I came back to this godforsaken time to get the Wiseman's precious neo-princess? You think that I would let that glorified youma use me? Do not insult me. _I_ am the one using _him_."

"Then you used Rubeus as well?" said Sapphire, not backing down. "And the Sisters?"

Something flashed across Diamond's face. He put his hands to his face, his wrists at his eyes.

Sapphire felt a prickle of power. He steadied himself, wary of Diamond deciding to use the hypnotic eye that the Wiseman had given him. He did not think it would work on him, with his powers, but…

Diamond lowered his hands. His eyes glowed coldly.

"I am hurt that you no longer feel able to trust me, Sapphire." His voice was cold and distant, the same tone that their father had used with his courtiers. "Perhaps you do not believe me, but I assure you that my interest in the princess is not merely my own selfish desires. I am thinking of our planet and our people."

Sapphire did not reply. He stared at the wall, inhaling shallowly through his nose. At last he said, "She might not even be here."

He hated this. He hated how Diamond always managed to make him believe in him again, no matter how strong his determination had been at the beginning of the conversation. He was giving in, again, and Diamond had not even had to use the Wiseman's eye.

"It would be like the High Senshi," he continued stubbornly, "to have given you the Time Key only so that you would occupy yourself searching here instead of fighting–"

"That was not their purpose," said Diamond. He was smiling as though he could sense his brother's capitulation.

"Then what was?" Sapphire's voice grew icy with his frustration and powerlessness.

Diamond only smiled more widely, his eyes glinting. "In time, brother. For now, leave me. I am weary."

Sapphire pushed away from the wall. His obedience made him sharp-voiced. "Is that all?" he said as he went to the door. "Do you even care how Emerald's quest for energy goes? Even if you do not care about the neo-princess, I would have thought you would worry about how we are to get the energy to get us away from this past."

"We will have more energy than we know what to do with, soon enough." Diamond pressed the door release, opening it for Sapphire. "No need to worry so, my little brother. Go get some sleep."

"You, too," Sapphire muttered reluctantly, stepping outside.

The door closed with a faint hydraulic hiss behind him. He stood there for a moment, then shook his head, sighing, and set off for the bridge.

-

In the tiny cracks of time between their extracurriculars, training, and patrolling, the Senshi-Shittenou group often ended up eating together. It was convenient for them all to troop over to Darien or Lita's apartment to whip up a fast dinner, get any new findings from Mikai, and share news with each other before going their separate ways to patrol, train, or work.

But thanks to their shared position on the track team, Darien and Serena's schedules coincided more with each other's than with anyone else's. So it was frequently that they often had time when the others didn't, or were busy when the others weren't, and would end up with each other to pick up Rini, or Buji, or both, and have dinner.

On nights like these, Darien preferred to grab take-out from somewhere and eat it together at his apartment. Serena, however, tended to insist on dragging them all to the grocery store to buy ingredients, ostensibly for her to cook dinner for them all herself. This invariably ended up with Darien doing the cooking while she watched happily, munching on something from his fridge.

The only time that she actually did cook was one night when Buji and Rini were both over and needed help with math homework. They were about as reluctant to accept math help from Serena as she was to give it, so Darien sat down with them at the table while Serena went to work in the kitchen on her best – and only – dish: curry.

"You guys are doing long division already?" said Darien with some surprise when he saw the pages their textbooks were opened to. As he recalled, he hadn't been taught long division until, what, fourth grade?

"Nakahara-sensei said we're ahead of everyone in math, so she gave us this homework to do instead of the regular stuff," Buji said proudly, his tongue at the corner of his mouth as he scrubbed his paper with an eraser.

"No, Nakahara-sensei said _I_ was ahead in math and gave me this homework." Rini eyed with disdain the eraser crumbs that Buji's violent erasing sent tumbling onto her own neat and eraser-smudgeless paper, and brushed them away with her fingertips. "You lied and told her you already knew how to do long division."

"I will know how to do it!" Buji finished erasing the problem on his paper – which now had a large hole torn in it from the violence of his exertions – and looked expectantly at Darien. "As soon as Darien-nii-san teaches me."

Rini rolled her eyes and went to work.

Darien regarded the curly-haired boy. "It's Darien-nii-san now, is it?"

Buji blinked innocently. "You've always been my nii-san, Darien-nii-san."

Darien swallowed a laugh, resisting the urge to call Serena to come witness this. Instead, he took a sheet of paper from the folder on the table.

"That's my paper," said Rini without looking up from her problems.

"Sharing is caring," Buji reminded her. "Let's learn, Darien-nii-san!"

When dinner was announced by the smoke alarm shrilling half an hour later – "Don't worry, I've got it!" came Serena's voice, followed by a splash and this hiss of something being extinguished, then a yelp and a thump as she apparently tripped in whatever she had splashed, then her exclamations not to worry, she was okay – Buji was catching up in the series of long division of problems to Rini.

The young girl appeared to have hit a wall with remainders. Darien could see that she was very frustrated, glaring so hard at her paper, which was now as smudged with eraser marks as Buji's, that her eyes were bright with stubbornly suppressed tears.

"Long division?" Serena exclaimed, not with excitement but with horror, when she came around the counter into the dining room. She held silverware in one hand and pitcher of water in the other. "What are you two doing that for? You're in second grade!"

"They're so smart that the teacher gave them fourth grade work to do." As he said this, Darien watched Rini's expression.

Serena's eyes followed his. "Fourth grade? Wow. That's some hard stuff! I remember it took me till middle school to figure out how to do remainders right."

Rini's shoulders, hunched over her paper, relaxed at this. Sitting up straight, she looked at Serena, her face no longer screwed up as though about to cry. When Buji got up on his knees in his chair to lean across the table and see her answers, she even pushed him away with her usual disdainful expression.

"Anyway, it's dinner time!" Serena clapped her oven-mittened hands. "Get all that icky math stuff off the table, my little geniuses!"

"Ha!" Buji hopped down from his chair with a jumble of papers in his arms. "She called you little, Darien-baka!"

"Back to Darien-baka now, are we?" said Darien dryly, leaning back in his chair. To Serena, he said, "I love how the only times you call me a genius, you're insulting me."

"Oh, get over yourself." Serena put her hands on her hips over the apron she had tied around her waist. "You know I was talking about them."

She laughed, and Darien followed her gaze to see that she was watching Rini neatly slide her papers back into her folder, flip the folder into her binder, and the binder into her backpack. Beside her bag, Buji's stuff was a messy pile of paper thrown on top of his backpack, which was also disgorging his jacket and marshmallow hat.

Darien laughed, too, and then followed her back into the kitchen. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to get the plates out of the cupboard as she struggled to untie the rather bizarre-looking knot she had used to tie the apron. It felt just as natural to laugh and push her hands away, handing her the plates, so that he could pull the knot out for her.

"Good God, Odango," he said a minute later, still trying to undo it. He'd gotten one knot undone, but beneath it had been revealed at least three more. His back was beginning to hurt from leaning over to pick at the knots. He straightened up, cracking his spine, and got down on his knees to continue trying to undo the knots. "What did you do, make a Gordian knot?"

"I don't know what that is," said Serena. She sounded a little breathless. There was heat radiating from her, too, as though she was flushing.

Darien smiled to himself. But for nothing in the world, he knew with sudden conviction, not even to brush his fingertips across the sliver of skin revealed by the knotted apron pulling her shirt's hem up, would he trade this wonderful, comfortable relationship that she had put aside her guilt to give him.

So he said lightly, "You might as well take up kidnapping. With knot-tying skills like this, no one would be able to escape once you tied them up."

Serena laughed and twisted around a little, her hand lifting as though to ruffle his hair. For a minute, it hovered there, as though she had suddenly remembered herself – then she let it fall, just for a moment, on top of his head. He pretended he did not feel its warm weight, though he could not keep his eyelids from falling shut for just a moment to bask in it, wishing for more weight so that it would sink so far into his memory that he would be able to go back and feel it again whenever he wanted.

-

It was to this memory that Darien usually retreated whenever Haruka Tennou played his little flirting games with Serena. Which was nearly every day, because, it turned out, Haruka was one of the other four members of Infinity's track team.

And unlike the _other_ three members – a slender, pony-tailed boy named Sei Le who never spoke except when he was on his cell phone, which was any time he wasn't running, and a guy and girl named Kobayashi and Saori, who didn't seem all that happy to have Darien, Serena, _or_ Coach Etoukou there – Tennou actually listened to Coach Etoukou's coaching instead of ignoring him.

He also never mentioned the track team's former coach, although Saori and Kobayashi frequently (and loudly, in Kobayashi's case) complained that their coach hadn't warned them he'd planned to quit and get them landed with a blaring oaf like Etoukou.

However, this willingness to be coached was about the extent of any good qualities Darien could discern in Tennou. The former Formula One racer had never been on Darien's good side to begin with; on principle, he had despised the other boy for dating Serena. But his growing distrust of Tennou stemmed from more than just this initial antagonism.

Because on that first day, in the parking garage, Serena had clearly been discomfited by Tennou's approach. Tennou must have noticed it. He had dated Serena for a month; he must have known her well enough to recognize her from the back-and-forth shuffle of her feet that she was uncomfortable. But he had come over and talked to her anyway. This blatant disregard of Serena's feelings reminded Darien of Seiko, that idiot football player who had always guilted Serena into doing things with him.

But at least Seiko had always seemed ignorant of Serena's feelings, too absorbed with himself to notice her reluctance. Tennou, as he talked to her that day, had worn a sly, pleased smile, as though he had known Serena didn't want to talk to him but had ploughed ahead anyway.

That sly smile was starting to get on Darien's nerves. In gym, at practices, even when they glimpsed him in the hall or at lunch, that smile always seemed to be hovering at Tennou's lips. Like he was smirking internally, amused by some joke that no one else had perceived.

Today was no different. As Coach whistled and clapped his hands together, shouting, "Shuttle runs today! The girls'll run against each other, and boys, you split into two groups of two!" Tennou leaned forward, propping an arm on Serena's head.

"Coach," the light-haired boy drawled, his shirt collar brushing Serena's ear. "Don't you think it would be a better challenge for the girls if they got pitted against us guys for once?" He lowered his arm from Serena's head to put it around her shoulders, leaning on her. "I don't think Saori's giving Muffinhead here enough of a challenge."

"Well, if the girls are running against each other, that means Serena'll be running against you and Saori, doesn't it, Tennou?" Darien said, tying one of his sneakers.

Kobayashi let out a bark of laughter, grabbing Saori by the shoulder and guffawing into her hair. Serena pressed her lips together in the way that Darien knew meant she thought something was funny but didn't want to show it.

Asanuma had muttered frequently about what a girly man Tennou was while Serena was dating him. Darien, blind then, had assumed it was just Asanuma's resentment exaggerating, but when he'd seen Tennou in the parking garage last week, he'd realized that Asanuma's rude comments were true. The former racer had a delicately featured face, his cheekbones as sharp as Darien's own, and his eyes bigger, more darkly lashed. His Adam's apple was barely visible, and on top of that, he was more slender than any guy Darien had ever seen, more Lita-like in stature than masculine, excepting the huge chest.

Darien finished tying his shoes and glanced up at Tennou. He expected some sort of glare or acidic expression, but the light-haired boy looked back at him with that amused smile more obvious than ever on his face.

"Thought I saw you checking me out, Shields," he said lightly, quirking a smirk. "Too bad for you, my heart's already taken." He dropped his arm from Serena's head to her shoulders, giving her a light squeeze, and then jaunted off to the farthest track block.

Sei Le, slipping his cell phone into his pocket, glanced at them and then followed Tennou.

Darien watched them go with narrowed eyes, glancing at Serena to gauge her expression. She flicked him in the shoulder as she passed him with a displeased-looking Saori to go to the other end of the track. _Behave_, her eyes told him.

He exhaled loudly and went with Kobayashi to begin the shuttle run drill.

-

The new schedule may have allowed Serena and Darien to spend more time together, but it was giving Lita and Motoki much less.

Lita grunted unhappily. Her hands were wrapping up the zucchini bread she had made to eat before judo practice the next day. But her mind was on Motoki. She saw him every day, but it was always with everyone else around, when they were riding to school or eating lunch, always discussing whose turn it was to patrol or train that night. And for some reason, he never seemed to catch her eye.

She wanted to talk to him, to know how his job with the catering business was going, to know if he was still excited about it or if the gloss was wearing off, to know if he was getting enough sleep and making friends in his classes and how his dad was doing...

Lita fingered the bumps that the plastic wrap made around the bread, remembering the pained expression that Motoki had been wearing that morning as he stared out the window after Asanuma asked him to patrol for him that night. The memory had distracted her all day, even to the point that her sparring partner in judo had been able to knock her over twice.

Her hands stilled on the half-wrapped bread.

She needed to talk to him. Just him and her, together.

Lita finished wrapping the zucchini bread. Then she put several wrapped slices in her pocket, transformed, and headed out to look for Motoki.

She found him at the arcade, or rather, its remains. The yellow police tape that had surrounded it was now replaced by orange construction tape that fluttered in the icy January wind. A bulldozer had been working on getting up the last of the wreckage, and it was on top of its motionless bulk that Motoki was sitting.

"Hey!" she barked. "No slacking on the job!"

She'd meant it as a joke, but Motoki started so hard that his armor clanged against the metal of the bulldozer. The sound reverberated through the cold night. He scrambled around.

"Lita!" he breathed when he saw it was her. "God. You scared me."

"Yeah, I can see that." Lita took a step closer on the bulldozer's roof, put a slightly tentative hand to his chest. His heart beat so wildly that she could feel it even beneath the layers of metal links.

He stepped back, breaking the contact between her hand and his armor. "What are you doing here?"

Lita's eyes narrowed. Those weren't good words. Immediately, she felt herself getting combative. She tried to quell it, reaching into her subspace pocket and putting her hand to the zucchini bread. As if it were a magical charm that could absorb her bad feelings, or something. "I wanted to talk to you."

"Oh." Motoki jumped from the bulldozer's roof. "Okay." He looked back up at her. "Can you talk while I patrol?"

Her response was to jump down as well. Then they set off down the streets, not at a walk, but not at a speed that Lita's Senshi muscles would call a run, either. At this speed, and going by the streets, not by rooftops, she didn't think Motoki was going to catch much on his patrol. But she felt too heartless pointing this out to him when he had just been sitting at the arcade ruins, obviously thinking about his dad.

"Um," he said, slightly breathless, after a few minutes of running. "What were you going to say?"

Lita, unconsciously, picked up the pace. What _had_ she been going to say? She hadn't come with a plan, just a…a hope that things could be made better. Like it would just happen, if she was there with him. What had she expected? That Motoki would grab her hand and bury his face in her neck and spill out how worried he was about his dad without her even needing to ask?

Yes, she realized as she thought about this. That was what she had expected.

But it hadn't happened. So what could she say now? Motoki wasn't like Darien and Asanuma, who needed to have bad things forcibly brought up to them because they would refuse to acknowledge them otherwise. Motoki didn't ignore things. He was fully, painfully aware of them. For her to bring it up and shove it in his front of his nose would be like sticking her finger in someone's wound to remind them that it was supposed to hurt.

"I just wanted to make sure you aren't going to try to break up with me again," she heard herself blurt out.

Motoki smiled at her.

It was his gentle smile, the same one he had used on all the middle school girls who always had crushes on him, to deflect them without offending them.

It made Lita growl.

"You did _not_ just give me that smile," she said.

The smile disappeared, replaced by a look of alarm. "What?"

"You…" She couldn't even finish. Unintended as it had been, what she'd blurted out had been supposed to be a joke. Something that would make him laugh despite himself and assure her that no he wouldn't and that he needed her because of the stuff with his dad, and then he would start talking to her about what was going on and how he felt, and then she could help him feel better.

But he'd gone and reacted like _that_, and now she was _pissed –_

"Forget it." She turned away, fists clenching, before she could explode at him. That was the last thing either of them needed. "Never mind."

"Lita…"

"I've got tons of homework. I'll see you tomorrow." She vanished, too quick for him to even guess which direction she'd gone in, much less follow her.

The zucchini bread stayed in her pocket.

-

Asanuma sighed, closing his bedroom door behind him and going to stand beside his bed. His red comforter was hanging off of the mattress, and there were crumbs all over his sheets from when he'd stuffed a few cookies into his mouth last night before dropping off to sleep because he'd been too exhausted to go downstairs and heat up any real food.

He ignored them, not even bothering to brush them off, and collapsed onto the mattress face-down.

He felt kind of bad asking Motoki to take over his patrol for him. He should have asked Lita, or Mikai, or even Serena. Not exhausted-eyed, anxiety-faced Motoki.

But he'd asked Motoki. And Asanuma knew, as the stale cookie crumbs lay hard and itchy against his skin, that he'd known when he asked Motoki that he shouldn't have bothered his grieving friend.

But Asanuma had gone ahead and done it anyway.

Because there was some angry, guilty part of Asanuma that wanted Motoki to look away from his dad for just one minute and look at him, Asanuma, instead. There was a part that wanted to say, fuck not telling them he was going to die so they wouldn't worry. He _wanted_ them to worry. He _wanted_ to grab Motoki by the shoulders and shout at him that he was going to die and see how Motoki's face would crumple. He wanted to tell it to his parents and see them go white the way they had when his little sister died.

He didn't _want_ to fade away while no one noticed. He didn't want to be swept under the rug, the way Rini was doing, pretending not to see him every time he came to the elementary school to pick up Buji.

_"The future's going to change_," Serena had said. And he'd believed her. Still believed her, sometimes. When she was smiling at him from across the lunch table, her eyes shining with an extra determined glint like she was reminding him what she'd said.

But every time Rini pretended not to see him, a little bit of the belief that Serena's words had built up in him was chipped away.

Because Rini didn't believe the future was going to change. She was ignoring him now so that when he was gone, she wouldn't feel pain from it.

Asanuma _wanted _her to feel pain from it.

He wanted them all to feel it.

"Asanuma?"

He rolled over, snapping up. His eyes blinked through the darkness, found a faint glow in the corner of his room. He scrabbled for his bedside lamp, switching it on.

"Buji!" he said roughly when the yellow light illuminated the curly-haired boy's translucent form, the gold stitching of his Elysian priest outfit gleaming. "How'd you get in here?"

Buji lifted his head, and Asanuma saw that his eyes were very bright in the lamplight. He knew that look. It made him put a hand to his head and groan internally. Then he scooted off his bed, toward the boy.

"What happened?"

Buji shook his head. "Nothing."

But he didn't move, just stood there, his awkward white dragon wings hanging dejectedly at his back.

Asanuma ran a hand through his hair. A teary eight year-old was the last thing he wanted to deal with tonight. If the kid wanted to clam up, that was fine with him. "Tell me what you're doing being such a creeper, at least."

Buji swiped a leather-guarded hand across his face. "Helios wanted me to practice teleporting different places from Elysion."

"And you decided to come here first? I'm flattered." Asanuma licked his finger, used it to pick up a few crumbs from his bed, and ate them, grimacing.

"No," Buji said. "I went home. And I saw Kaa-chan through the window." He hesitated, and Asanuma knew this was where the tears probably came into it. "She was crying."

"Well, pregnant women do that," said Asanuma. "Having a baby inside them makes them all emotional. It makes them feel fat, you see."

"Shut up!" said Buji angrily. "It's not a joke! She was crying over a picture of Tou-san!"

Asanuma said nothing. Buji glared at him, wings half-lifted at his shoulders.

"And?" said Asanuma at last. "What do you want me to do? Go over there and knock her out? She can't cry if she's unconscious."

"_No_!" cried Buji, eyes going wide.

"Then what?" Asanuma said. "You're upset because she was crying. Do you want her not to cry? Do you want her to not miss your dad?"

"No," cried Buji again, his eyebrows knitting now with confusion and pain. "I – " He broke off. "I…"

"Exactly," said Asanuma. "So go tell Helios no more training tonight and go back to your body so you can cuddle with your mom and make sure she knows you remember your dad and miss him too."

Buji closed his mouth. He nodded, once, like he did when Asanuma had just shown him a new knife thrust or high kick. Then he disappeared.

Asanuma ran his hand through his hair again and crawled back into his bed. He pulled the covers over his head so he wouldn't see the shadowy shape of the easel with its unfinished canvas next to his bed.

But the knowledge of its presence pressed against his mind anyway.

_Rei._

Would she cry for him when she found out he was dead?

-

The next day, Serena's muscles still burned from all the shuttle runs that Coach had made them run.

Trying to ignore it, she glanced through the window at the darkening sky again. She started to chew her lip, only to stop, wincing. Coach had started making them practice outside to prepare for their first track, which was a little more than a week away. Her bottom lip was fiercely chapped from all the cold wind, and it stung when she touched it.

At least it would be as good as new after she transformed for her patrol tonight.

Serena's eyes drifted to the sky again, then back to the exit door of the girl's locker room. If Lita didn't come out soon, Serena would have to leave before she got to talk to her.

Just then, the girls' locker room door swung open.

Serena jumped off the windowsill she had been sitting on and trotted after the tall brunette who had begun to stride rapidly down the hallway.

"Lita!"

Lita swung around. "Serena?"

Her hair was wet, like she'd gotten so sweaty during practice that she'd had to wash it. Serena nodded to herself, knowing now that her suspicions from that day weren't baseless. Lita had never had to break a sweat to deal with the other members of the Infinity judo team. Something was definitely wrong.

"What?" said Lita, her hand going to her hair. She'd noticed Serena staring at it with furrowed brows. "Is something in my hair?"

"No." Serena fell into step with Lita, her plaid skirt flouncing. "I wanted to see if you wanted to go get milkshakes."

Lita's eyes had already drifted back into space again as they walked. She didn't answer.

Serena touched her arm. "Lita?"

"Huh?" The tall girl jerked, looking down. "Sorry, what?"

"Do you want to go get a milkshake with me?"

"A milkshake?" Lita said blankly. Then, "Don't you have track practice today?"

Serena shrugged. "I skipped."

This got Lita's attention. She blinked. "And Etoukou hasn't tracked you down yet?"

As if on cue, suddenly a shout came echoing down the hallway. "TSUKINOOOOOO!"

Serena and Lita looked at each other, eyes wide. Then Serena seized Lita's hand again and dragged her down the hallway at full Senshi speed before Coach Etoukou could catch them.

-

The girls finally stopped outside a trendy ice cream parlor five blocks from Infinity Academy.

Lita bent over her knees, panting. "Wow," she gasped.

"Not, bad, Lita." Serena grinned, barely breathing hard at all. "Don't Coach Etoukou see you running that fast or you'll be on the track team before you know it."

"No…way," Lita wheezed. "I'd join cheerleading before I'd let that psycho be my coach!"

Serena giggled at the idea of Lita in a mini-skirt, waving pom-poms and shrieking cheers for boys playing sports. She was pretty sure her friend would sooner kiss Coach Etoukou.

Wisely deciding not to share this thought with Lita, she grabbed her hand and pushed open the parlor door. "Ooh! They have mango sherbert!"

"I thought you were kidding about the milkshakes," Lita said, eyeing the glass cases of ice cream with disbelief. She made a face. "It's freezing outside. What do you want to have cold ice cream for?"

"I guess you're right." Serena tapped her chin, mirroring Lita's frowning expression. "Okay, then we'll have hot fudge sundaes. Two, please!" she told the cashier.

Lita shook her head, smiling despite herself.

A minute later, they each held a warm cup of ice cream swimming in hot fudge. "There go all the calories I burned running here," Lita commented, holding the cup up to her eye and peering at all the fudge as they slid into a booth.

She looked at Serena, who was already licking her spoon. "So you finally got sick of Etoukou slave driving you?"

Serena put a big spoonful of ice cream in her mouth. "He's not so bad," she said. "Mostly I wanted to talk to you."

"About what?" Lita sat forward, eyes intent. "Did something happen?"

"N-not about me!" Serena waved her hands. "I thought…well, Lita, are _you_ doing okay? I mean," she stumbled on, seeing the way Lita's face shut down. "You didn't talk to Toki at all today, so I was kind of…"

Lita's bangs were hanging over her eyes. She pushed her plastic spoon through the sundae, swirling the white cream and dark fudge.

"It's okay if you don't want to talk about it," said Serena, a little uncertainly, playing with her own spoon. "I just wanted you to know – "

"Is it?"

Serena saw that Lita had lifted her eyes to look at her. Her bangs still hung over them, her arms clasping each other in front of her chest vulnerably, making her look as young as Serena had ever seen her.

"Is it what?" she said gently.

"Is it…" Lita stumbled, much as Serena had. "…okay, to not want to talk about it?" Her words made a question, but her voice sounded flat, like she was saying that it wasn't, it wasn't okay.

Serena chewed her chapped lip, aware that this was about much more than what she had just said to Lita. Most likely, based on the way they had been acting the past few days, it was about Motoki.

"I don't think it's okay," Lita said abruptly. "If you're worried about me and I won't tell you what's wrong, that means I don't trust you enough to help me. It would mean I don't think you could make me feel better."

Serena had a heavy anxiety coiling in her stomach. It was like the one she had gotten when she was younger and her parents were fighting with each other. The paralyzing anxiety that made you wonder, if two people who had loved each other so much could have changed feelings, what in the world could you ever depend on not to change?

"Lita," she heard herself say. "Motoki's just going through a hard time right now. You know he doesn't like to burden other people with his feelings."

"I know." Lita's arms stayed crossed tightly. "But he did, before. At Christmas. He trusted me enough to let me see how scared he was. Now he won't."

"Lita…" Serena didn't know what else to say.

Lita sighed. "I think I let myself think too much into it. With all this youma stuff going on, it's easy to forget that we're really just teenagers."

She looked at Serena, rubbing the back of her neck. "High school relationships are supposed to be like this. You get a crush on someone, you go out with them, you have fun for a while, then you realize you're not the same person you were when you started dating and you want something different now. And…" She shrugged. "You break up."

The coiling thing in Serena's stomach had begun to cry. Lita looked so distant and shielded, like the black-eyed person Serena had first met in Miss Haruna's classroom a year ago, who avoided everyone's eyes like she didn't want to see how they were looking at her.

Serena wanted to track Motoki down and shout at him for turning Lita back into this, this guarded, unhappy person. But she wanted to defend him to Lita because he was only acting like this because he was hurting, his dad was _dying_, and she couldn't give up on him now, not when he was so vulnerable! But she wanted to throw her arms around Lita and tell her she was right, tell her not to feel bad, and to squeeze her so tight that all the sadness and uncertainty would seep out of her.

But what Serena wanted most was to make sure that Lita knew she was her friend no matter what.

So she ignored all the thoughts in her head, got up from her side of the booth, and knotted her arms around Lita in the tightest hug she could muster.

-

Emerald drummed her fingers on her knee. "You told me it would be ready today, Tomoe."

"It _is_ ready, Ms. Emerald," the doctor said without looking away from the one-way glass and the clipboard in his hands. He had been looking back and forth between them, writing rapidly, for at least fifteen minutes now. "However, if Mr. Achiral's treatment of my other experiment is any indication, I highly doubt that you will return my subject in any sort of condition to allow me to analyze it as fully as I would wish."

Emerald tittered. "It's certainly not our fault that your security is so lax that experiment of yours escaped."

"Nevertheless," said Tomoe dispassionately. "I will thank you to let me indulge my curiosity now. Some of us have more use for these youma than merely carnage."

Emerald laughed, high and shrill. This Terran butcherer, accusing_ her_ of carnage? It was enough to make her sides ache.

"I can get you more subjects to carry out your little experimentations on whenever you need," she said when she was done laughing. "_You_ have plenty of time."

_She_ did not. Prince Diamond, on one of the rare occasions he had returned home, had given her a swift, disapproving glance when she appeared before his throne, and had not even bothered to address her. With the Wiseman floating silently beside him, it was enough to make Emerald feel as though her death warrant had already been signed.

Tomoe said nothing to this, merely continued to peer into the white-walled room at its occupant and to write on his clipboard.

Emerald let out another annoyed sigh. She let her eyes drift around the sterile white hallway. They landed on the window, through which she could see the door to that room that had held the talking white cat.

"I'm curious, Tomoe," she began conversationally. "How in the world did you ever come across that cat?"

The doctor paused in his writing, glancing at the room himself. "My daughter found him, actually," he said. "We – "

"_You_ have offspring?" Emerald interrupted. She burst into peals of laughter. She couldn't imagine anyone being attracted enough to this man to be intimate with him. She laughed harder. "By test tube, I'm assuming?"

The icy look that Tomoe gave Emerald was almost enough to frighten her into falling silent. She stopped laughing, reluctantly.

"I have been married twice," he said. "Once for love and once for business. My daughter was conventionally conceived."

He stopped speaking and resumed writing.

Making a bit of a face, Emerald glanced at the room again, where the cat was sleeping fitfully, its eyes half-lidded and limbs twitching. "Your daughter found the cat?"

"Yes. Early last summer. It was lying on a path in the park, moaning like a human. I was intrigued. And it began to speak to Hotaru. Deliriously, but in human speech nonetheless. Of course I had to bring it here and observe it, and quite the windfall it proved to be."

Tomoe clicked his pen shut. "It did not want to speak to me at first, but once I introduced a little stimulation, it was quite willing to share some very interesting information about the Sailor Senshi with me."

Emerald, remembering the cat's singed bald spots and the metal wire covering the floor of the cat's cell, realized at once what 'a little stimulation' must be.

Tomoe slipped his pen into his white coat pocket and turned around to face Emerald. His mechanical eye glinted expectantly. "I am finished."

Emerald's attention snapped immediately away from the cat. She smirked and snapped her fingers. "Achiral!"

The long-haired droid appeared, kneeling before her.

"It's time," Emerald told him. "You have a location in mind?"

The droid smiled, kissing her hand. "Yes, Mistress."

Emerald smiled back. "Then go."

-

_"I think I let myself think too much into it."_

Sailor Moon could no more escape the memory of Lita's words than she could the sound of gravel crunching beneath her boots as she wandered across the rooftops.

_"You break up."_

Lita was her friend. Serena would support her no matter what.

But she still didn't feel certain that giving up on her relationship with Motoki was the right thing to do.

_Of course you don't_, thought a nasty voice in her head. _Lita knows Motoki _could_ be the one meant for her, but she's decided that she can let him go. You know that Darien_ isn't_ meant for you, but you're still too selfish to let go._

It was such an unhappy, noxious thought that Moon actually felt relief when the hairs on the back of her neck lifted, alerting her that there was a youma nearby.

She pushed thoughts of Darien and Lita from her mind and focused on the youma's presence instead. Her eyes squeezed shut with concentration.

Two youma. The attack was very close by. In fact, it might be on this very street…

Icy air rushed up Moon's skin as she dropped to the street.

She landed in a crouch and immediately saw the source of the disturbance: a grocery store three doors down had a cart stuck between its electric doors, the doors crashing against the metal as they tried repeatedly to close. An elderly woman was slumped over the cart, unconscious.

Moon rushed down the sidewalk, taking the woman off the cart and laying her gently on the sidewalk. Then she shoved the cart through the doors and burst in after it.

It was eerily quiet. The only sounds were the electric doors sliding shut behind her and the oldies music playing softly on the store speakers. There were no beeps from the row of checkout counters in front of her. There were no screams, no sounds of running feet or of projectiles hitting walls.

There were just the cashiers, slumped over their registers, and the customers, slumped over carts or collapsed to the linoleum floor. No energy glowed around them, as though the youma had already come and taken their energy, then moved on.

Moon concentrated, searching again for the youma presence. She sensed a faint itch, and realized that the youma had moved, to the store next door.

But there was still a presence here…

Moon's stomach sank.

A human youma's presence.

For a moment, she hesitated. She knew that she should spin now and run to the next door, stop the youma from sucking more people's energy.

But she was becoming aware of an acrid smell here, like the kind that filled the air after Jupiter used one of her attacks on a youma. And she could hear something now, too, a strange crackle like the kind that came from a staticky television. And with it…she could hear what sounded like whimpers and pants. Like someone needed help but was too weak to scream.

Moon took halting steps along the row of check-out lanes, avoiding stepping on people, trying to find the sounds' source.

In check-out lane five, she found it.

The check-out counter was empty, a chain across it with a sign that said, _Please proceed to next available cashier_.

Beneath the sign huddled a woman's body.

Electricity crackled over it, so hot that the sparks were tinted green like Jupiter's lightning. Clouds of smoke drifted silently up from each sporadic fork of electricity as it surged across the woman, jerking her limbs and making her whimper breathlessly.

Sailor Moon, frozen in horror, watched the woman struggle to lift her head. Beneath the smoking, paper-thin medical gown she wore, the woman's body was a raw mass of burns.

They began to lighten and turn pink as Moon watched, like they were healing, but then electricity would rip across her body again, turning the skin black and charred once more.

With a shaking hand, Moon reached toward her tiara. Thoughts of the youma attacking next door had plummeted straight out of her mind. Thoughts of any victims except this writhing, suffering woman had plummeted straight out of her mind.

All Moon knew was that she had to save her.

Her sweat-dampened fingertips touched the stone at her forehead.

"M-m-moon Twilight F-flash," trembled her voice.

Light flashed. It twisted and became arcs of colored light, and spilled over the woman-made-youma and the crumpled bodies on the floor.

But when the lights faded, the woman was still on the store floor, gasping with pain. If anything , the flares of electricity grew worse, coming so frequently that there seemed to be no intervals between them. The woman's blackening mouth fell open on a scream.

Then a Black Moon void opened behind her.

A hand came out of it and grabbed her raw leg. She let out a scream of anguish.

Moon lunged forward, grabbing for the woman.

Her fingertips brushed the woman's raw skin.

But the void slurped up the rest of the woman's body.

-

"Success!" Emerald shrieked, cupping the globe of swirling energy in her hands. "At last! Achiral!"

The droid appeared. "Yes, Mistress?"

"Go inform Sapphire that I have the energy he's been waiting for."

Achiral bowed and stepped backward into a void.

"Chiral!" Emerald called.

The other droid stepped out of a void. He dragged the human youma woman behind him, gripping her by the hair still left on her head as she panted, crying.

Emerald fanned away the smoke that wafted from the human as another wave of electricity hissed down her body. But even this disgust could not keep her down for long. The venture had been successful! Sailor Moon had been so horrified by Tomoe's little experiment that she had not attempted to stop Chiral from draining more Terrans' energy.

She clapped her gloved hands together, bouncing on her high heels and looking gleefully at the human youma. "Chiral, what shall we do with our present from Dr. Tomoe?"

Chiral dropped his hold on the thing's hair and put his slippered foot atop her back instead, pinning her lazily. "If it was so effective a first time, there is a good chance that it will be useful to us again, Mistress."

"Well, I am all about being green." Emerald tossed her verdant hair. "Go put it in the cargo bay so we can recycle it another day." She spun on her heel, opening up her own void. "_I _will be receiving my praise from Prince Diamond."

-

But Prince Diamond was not in his throne room that day. Nor was he anywhere he could usually be found in this time, which was in the great capitals and cities of the planet, seeking the princess's past self in these places of power.

Instead, he was in his sleeping chambers, staring at the ceiling. Sweat filmed his bare limbs; he held the coolness of his wrists against his eyes to draw away the burning.

His conversation with Sapphire, rather than dissuading him, had only made him burn more fiercely for the princess. He had just awoken from a dream about the first time he saw the Moon Princess…

-

_ Goddesses did exist. In the countless reaching octopus arms of the universe, in the thousands of swirling galaxies and nebulae, gods and goddesses walked among mortals._

_ Diamond had mistaken her for one of them when he passed a pleasure chamber on his second trip to Chaos's base in the Zero Alpha system. Only a goddess could have such long, glowing silver hair, those liquid lavender eyes, and that sigil shining so brightly upon her forehead._

_ But the Moon Princess of the Silver Crystal was no goddess, his guide informed him, wheezing with laughter._

_ "If the gods and goddesses were as powerful as that bitch, Chaos wouldn't have a chance," she cackled._

_ Diamond had lifted a white brow, for this seemed a risky thing for the hag to say when she was under Chaos's employ, and walking through the twisting halls of Chaos's base. _

_ He had no fear for himself, of course. On his first visit, when he had come as an unwilling ambassador from his father's court, sent because his father would not risk his own life by answering Chaos's request for a meeting but would not risk angering the super-being either, by not sending someone, Diamond might have feared for his safety if he was caught in the company of someone with such a treacherous tongue. But that first meeting, he thought, touching his wrist to the eye on his forehead with satisfaction, had proven quite profitable to himself. He no longer had any fear of Chaos, only eagerness to see what the superpower might offer him this time, now that Diamond was Nemesis's king and not merely its crown prince._

_ A king moreover, who was in possession of a very special artifact from the High Senshi._

_ Diamond's eyes slid back to the life-sized hologram of the princess, visible through the viewport._

_ "May I?" he asked his guide, who screwed up her wrinkled face and then shrugged._

_ "If you want." She keyed the door pad. The door slid up._

_ Diamond entered the empty chamber. Padded mats carpeted the floor, and the stench of sweat sharpened the recycled air. He was used to this, too; clean air was nearly nonexistent on Nemesis, the barren planet he ruled. It had little atmosphere, forcing its people to live inside airtight, pressurized city-centers._

_ What he was not used to was a woman like this Moon Princess. White and fragile, as though no gravity would be able to hold her. Like she would just drift away into silent space and become another white dot in the black stretch of sky._

_ "I press this button?" he said over his shoulder to the female._

_ "It depends on what setting you want." She limped up beside him. "This one is based on the most recent sightings of her."_

_ Diamond swept his eyes down the hologram again, inhaling as deeply as though he could smell her. Her hair was a lighter silver than his own, the fine braids wrapped around her hair buns in a shimmering crown. Draped in a long white cloak that nearly hid her slender body and its thin, delicately wrought silver mesh armor, she cupped the Silver Crystal in her palms, looking simultaneously defiant and supplicating. It made his blood race. How often he had imagined his father in this stance, begging him for mercy. And how heady he had felt when his dream had come to life._

_ "It's the highest combat setting, and even then, she's not very strong." The hag clicked her tongue and reached a gnarled, six-fingered hand past him. "We usually use her for other things instead. The prisoners who end up here are usually already almost dead, you know? Can't have too much fun with them, they don't last very long. But these holograms, they can make you feel almost as good as the real thing."_

_ Her rough fingers put something circular and cold to Diamond's temple, then pressed a button._

_ The slender, cloaked princess before him faded into the same woman, but younger, smaller. Her lilac eyes were wide and fearful, her arms wrapped around herself as she shivered in a thin white gown. The very weight of the gold and pearls embroidered onto it seemed too heavy for her. She seemed to be staring at Diamond, her eyes wide and pleading. Diamond caught his breath._

_ "The Moon Princess from the Silver Millennium," said the hag, almost whispering. Glee crackled in her voice. "Doesn't it just make you want to – ooh." She shivered, running her hands up herself. "Look, see how far I've gotten with her." _

_ She pressed another button, and the hologram collapsed to her hands and knees on the floor. The glorious silver hair pooled in a puddle of blood on the floor. A pair of wings even whiter than her dress hung plucked and broken from her shoulder blades. Red blood crept from the puddle up the remaining white feathers._

_ Diamond could not even breathe._

_ "Right?" breathed the hag. "So good. Feel her, feel her – " She seized Diamond's arm and shoved it against the crumpled hologram._

_ Diamond jerked. The hologram's arm felt warm and solid. _

_ Soft._

_ His hand, which he had snatched back, reached out again, stroking the silken skin. He could even see the delicate blue and green veins creeping through the translucent skin at her elbow… _

This_ was the being who had been able to keep the monstrously powerful Chaos at bay for years?_

_ Someone so vulnerable…but so powerful?_

_ "It gets better," sang the crone breathily._

_ Diamond, transfixed by the paradox beneath his fingertips, did not notice that the hag had shaken a blade from her sleeve until she drew it down the hologram's arm and red sprang up, trickling, making a tree of red branches on her perfect white skin._

_ Diamond's hand shot out. "Stop." _

_ He pulled the gnarled hand from the perfect arm._

_ The crone did not seem perturbed. "Look at her eyes," she breathed. _

_ Diamond looked, and found that the princess's face had twisted into a supplicating mask of pain. But even her blood was powerful, filling the sweaty air with a scent that sparkled through his nerves like wine…_

_ He released the guide. "Leave. You may come here to retrieve me when Chaos wishes to address me."_

_ The hag said nothing, only cackled softly. He heard her footsteps and the door hissing shut behind her._

_ Diamond stared at the silver goddess before him and wiped the blood from her arm. It felt warm, wet. He lifted his red-daubed fingertips to his lips and tasted salt._

_ He knew what he wanted from Chaos this time._

-

Diamond pulled his wrists from his eyes. He reached for the key lying on a chain around his neck. The metal was icy cold, had been from the first day that the High Senshi gave it to him. Sapphire had taken one look at it and told him to take it off and throw it into a void.

But Sapphire was not king, and he was no longer the only one of them with powers.

The thought made Diamond smile despite the heat throbbing behind his eyes. He had come a long way since he was a child, watching his mother's casket being launched gently into space to join the rings of debris that surrounded Nemesis, while his father's arm snaked around a new woman's shoulders.

He had come so far that there was only a little further to go.

Only a little further.

He rolled over onto his pillow and thought of tear-filled lavender eyes.

-

Tuxedo Mask landed beside Sailor Moon just in time to grab her hair and pull it back as she lurched forward and threw up.

He dispassionately watched the brown- and pink-streaked white puddle splash on the grocery store tile. His gloved hand smoothed down her shoulder blades rhythmically, rubbing warm circles.

When she was done and began to sit up, he kept his hand lightly on her back. "Human youma?" he said.

Moon's head bobbed shakily. "They," she rasped. "They took her back again." Her eyes were red, whether from the tears on her cheeks or because she'd burst a few blood vessels from the force of her vomiting, he wasn't sure. "I didn't save her."

"We will," Mask murmured, still trying to soothe her. "Next time. Just wait."

His insides were all clenched up with helplessness. It wasn't fair that Serena, the one who was probably the most sensitive, after Motoki, to seeing something as horrible as people turned into monsters, was the one who had encountered both of them.

If only he had gotten here faster…

Mask began rubbing circles on her back again with one hand and used his teeth to strip the glove from his hand with the other.

A moment of concentration had the water vapor in the air around his hand condensing into a quivering mass of water in his palm. He guided it to her mouth. "Here."

Moon's eyes darted up to his. She shook her head, clamping her mouth tightly shut.

"I don't have any juice in my Subspace pocket for you to rinse with," he said impatiently. "Just drink it, Serena."

"Can't you make a – a cup or something?" She swiped a gloved hand across her mouth, grimacing. She wouldn't look at him. "There's throw-up all over me."

"My hand's not going to shrivel up and fall off because it gets some of your bodily fluids on it," Mask said teasingly. Then sobered, thinking of all the times that he'd had her blood on his hands.

Moon looked at him, took a deep breath, looked away, flushed, and ducked her head to his hand. Her lips were gone almost before they even brushed his palm, and then she was swishing, looking at him with full chipmunk cheeks that were bright pink.

_Swish, swish, swish_.

Then she stopped swishing. And frowned as much as she could with full cheeks. Her quandary was so clear that he almost laughed. Where was she supposed to put the water now?

When she sensed his amusement, she glared at him, her blush fading. Mask smirked and pulled off his top hat, depositing it in her lap.

"It might as well be good for something at least one time in its existence," he said.

She looked a little pained at the idea of spitting into his top hat, but she did it anyway. He politely handed her his clean glove, which she used to wipe her mouth, and then pulled them both to their feet.

"I don't think anyone's called the police yet," she said, looking around. "The attack was so fast and quiet – I think people were really confused and distracted when they saw…" She faltered.

He nodded and flipped open his cell phone, already tersely giving the address of the store to the emergency dispatcher. He flipped it shut again.

"You were, too," he said. It wasn't a question.

She nodded. "It's just…" She turned and looked at him, hugging the top hat to her chest. "I can't describe it. It's so horrible, Darien. All these people here could have died from having their energy sucked out, and I still don't think it would be as bad as what that poor woman was…"

She broke off again.

He nodded. "I understand." A sweep of this building and the neighboring ones with his senses told him what else they needed to know. "And no one's dead. There's just some faint energy drain."

The Black Moon had probably only intended to test the usefulness of these new youma they had. But now that they'd seen that they worked this time, distracting Sailor Moon from the actual energy-draining, they would probably use the human-youma to harvest larger amounts of energy.

Mask grimaced. They were probably going to be seeing a lot more action on their patrols now.

"Come on." He grabbed Moon's hand. "Let's get out of here before the ambulances get here."

-

One minute, Darien had been showing Rini how to coax the flower embryo out of the cotyledon with water. The next, he was shooting to his feet, eyes burning gold, and disappearing abruptly with a single terse sentence: "Serena found a youma."

Rini sighed, looking back down at the little green sprout cupped between her hands. It was already beginning to wilt because she was losing concentration.

She tried to focus again, willing water to osmose through the stem's cell walls, but even if her actions had any effect, she didn't notice it. Her mind was too consumed by the anxiety whirling in her stomach.

Rini knew she shouldn't feel so anxious. Serena fought youma all the time, and Lita had told her that she used to fight a lot on her own, even, before the rest of them came along. Even Buji had stories about the battles Sailor Moon had fought when she was the only Senshi around, for all that Rini was pretty sure some of them had been greatly inflated, especially the one that involved the Dark Kingdom taking over a whole cruise ship and Sailor Moon steering the whole boat safely back to shore after she dusted all the youma.

But Asanuma had been just as experienced in the future at fighting youma as Serena was now. And he had still died.

"Hey."

She looked up.

Buji was standing above her. His arms were crossed, like he was trying to impersonate a tough gangster from one of his precious shounen manga.

She glanced past him, to where he had been meditating with Helios and where the white-haired priest still sat, brow furrowed as he stared into space. Helios never seemed happy when Serena was brought up, so he was probably even less happy that Darien had disappeared so abruptly to go to her.

Rini frowned a little at the priest, then cleared her face and glanced back up at Buji, giving him a look to let him know she wasn't impressed. "What."

"I don't like the way you've been ignoring Asanuma."

A shock rippled through her, unpleasantly. But she kept her expression blank, transferring her attention back to the flower between her hands.

She tried to concentrate again.

Buji stalked up against her, banging his knees intentionally against her shoulder blades. His splintery dragon wings curled around them both like a tent, the clawed ends trembling just in front of her shoulders. "Don't ignore me!"

Rini ignored him.

"You're a brat!" Buji's shout echoed in the little cocoon of space that his wings had made around them. "You're a stupid, spoiled BRAT!"

"Buji!" Helios's horrified voice rang out. Only a split second later, the white-haired priest was pulling Buji back, his wings snapping away from Rini. "What are you thinking? This is your _princess_ – "

"I don't care! Asanuma's going to die for her, but all she's doing is ignoring him like he's already dead!"

"Iwara Bujiro, if you do not contain yourself – "

"You're a brat," Buji yelled at Rini, straining against the hold Helios had on his collar. His eyes were red-rimmed, and steam curled from his nostrils like a real dragon about to blow fire. "Some kids would give anything to have what you've got. You've got the chance to spend time with him before he dies – "

"That is _enough_." Helios clamped his pale hand firmly over Buji's mouth. "Rini-hime, please go home."

Rini squeezed the flower sprout between her hands. She felt the stem snap. With a ragged breath, she willed herself away from Elysion.

-

Sailor Lanai was almost through the Milky Way's Carina Arm when she sensed the auras behind her.

_Damn it._

Her body was already flagging from drawing on her life-force to increase her speed. There wasn't much faster she could go.

If only the High Council had allowed her to keep the Time Key. She could have somehow slipped past Pluto and back to Earth in the time she needed…

But Sailor Chi had taken it carefully from her and placed it carefully into a very old-looking stone chest with a rhombus engraved on its lid.

Lanai's pulse leapt as one of the auras behind her put on a burst of speed.

She sent more aura surging to her screaming wing muscles.

_Almost there…!_

-

-

A/N: Please review. Favorite/least favorite scenes or characters? Anything confusing? Please let me know what's working and what's not so I can tweak these last few chapters to be as good as possible.


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary:** How do you foresee a separate stream of time? It branches off at one event, one thought, among trillions. Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask confront their pasts, their futures, and the sins that brought them together in this sequel to Subject to Change.

**A/N**: I've finished Season 2's last chapter, and I think I've discovered that my true calling is as a smut writer. STC's going to have to change genres from "angst" to "lemon."

Ha ha, just kidding.

Kind of.

I'd like to thank everyone for all their reviews. They're been a tremendous help to me. Usually when it comes to school, I'm more of an Ami than a Serena, but this semester I had a really hard time. Whenever I felt really discouraged, I reread STC reviews, and they cheered me up incredibly. Thank you SO MUCH.

Last but opposite of least, thanks to Jade, whose semester has been just as tough as mine but who still manages to read and post my rambling. She deserves a life-sized Byakauya doll.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Sailor Moon.

Chapter 29 Timeline:

190. Emerald discovered Dr. Tomoe's lab, where he has been creating human youma. They made an agreement: if Tomoe would supply her with youma, Emerald would help him obtain subjects. Emerald also encountered Artemis imprisoned inside Tomoe's lab.

191. On New Year's Eve, when Haruka (controlled by Uranus's flash-form) went after Rei and Hotaru at Senator Hino's mansion, Michiru followed. Unconsciously, she succumbed to Neptune's flash-form for long enough for Neptune to use her powers to heal the wound Rei had inflicted on Uranus.

192. When Haruka woke up, she seemed almost psychotically upset that Uranus's flash-form had taken over. She told Michiru that they needed to find Rei to kill Saturn so that Pluto would never be able to wake the princess up. As long as Saturn is not awoken, Pluto would not be able to wake up the princess's and Senshi's flash-forms without risking the princess going to hell. To get to Rei, Haruka said, they would use Asanuma.

193. Helios and Asanuma trained Buji, while Serena, Lita, and Darien trained Rini.

194. Mikai discovered that Tokyo's missing person count has skyrocketed. Meanwhile, the rest of the gang continued to slave away at judo, cooking, and track. Darien enjoyed being able to spend time with Serena and the others in their rare spare time.

195. Sapphire begged Diamond to stop leaving Tokyo to search for the Moon Princess. Diamond insisted that _he_ was the one using the Wiseman, not the other way around, and hinted that the High Senshi had given him a mission to perform when they gave him their Time Key in the future.

196. After noticing how he was avoiding talking to her, Lita realized that Motoki didn't trust her enough to share his grief with her. After a talk with Serena over sundaes, she decided to break up with him.

197. During her patrol, Sailor Moon stumbled across a human youma and a normal youma attack. She went to the human youma instead of stopping the other youma's attack and tried to heal the woman with her Twilight Flash. It was ineffective, and the woman was sucked back into a Black Moon void.

198. Emerald sent one of her droids to inform Diamond of her success with the human youma and the energy she had obtained. Diamond was too deeply asleep to care, dreaming of how he had first encountered the Moon Princess, as a hologram in a pleasure chamber at Chaos's base.

199. Tuxedo Mask arrived and helped Moon away from the scene of the attack.

200. In Elysion, where they were both training, Buji confronted Rini about the way she had been ignoring Asanuma. He shouted at her that she should take advantage of the chance to spend time with him before he died. Helios intervened, and Rini fled home.

201. Sailor Lanai, almost back to Earth, detected High Senshi auras pursuing her. She increased her speed, wishing that she still had the Time Key the High Senshi had taken from her and put into a chest with a rhombus engraved on its lid.

**Subject to Change**

Season 2

Chapter Thirty: A Short and Slippery Slope

_In the Future:_

There had always been times during his youth that Sapphire was isolated from the world his older brother inhabited. As the son of the concubine-belatedly-become-wife – the wife, moreover, who had come from a Nemisisian gypsy clan and thus had passed her dirty blood on to her child – Sapphire had neither the privileges nor the duties of Crown Prince Diamond.

And yet, as children, the two boys were as close as two boys a year apart in age could be. Aside from the simpering courtiers' children, Sapphire was the only boy of his age with whom the Crown Prince was allowed to associate, and Diamond loved Sapphire for this. Aside from Sapphire's mother, Diamond was the only one who didn't treat Sapphire differently because of the powers that Sapphire was rumored to–and, in truth, did–possess, and Sapphire loved Diamond for this.

They ran together and played together, were taught lessons and swordplayed together, learned together how to avoid their father when he was ill-tempered, and concocted extravagant plans of ruling the galaxy together.

But their brotherhood changed as they grew older.

The two youths, who had once spent whole days side by side, united by their fear of their stormy-faced father, saw each other only rarely. Diamond entered a close apprenticeship under their father to be shaped into a proper king of Nemesis. Sapphire was left to study alone with their tutor and to ride and to practice swordsmanship alone, for no one would interact with him without Prince Diamond present to ensure that his younger brother did not use his gypsy powers to invade their minds.

Every few weeks, Diamond might come to visit Sapphire and his mother, and they would go riding or to the army barracks to spar with their practice swords. For Sapphire, these moments, when he saw Diamond laughing and smiling, when he felt his brother slapping him on the back in hearty approval, were all the more precious because of the time that he and Diamond were forced to spend apart.

But these moments were all the harder to trust as well.

How often had the king gone from proudly gripping Sapphire's shoulder one moment to ignoring him in company the next, as though he wasn't his son because he had been born out of wedlock? Or because he had been born to a gypsy?

Their father was the one training Diamond in the ways of the court, in the ways of recognizing and ignoring individuals however it best served his purposes at the time. Diamond might very well only be putting his tutelage into use every time he tousled Sapphire's hair or grasped his shoulder. He could be keeping Sapphire's affection while it served him, and ignoring him as soon as it became convenient.

The prospect sent Sapphire retreating into himself, guarding his thoughts and affections more carefully around his brother.

Then, one morning Sapphire went to his mother's chambers and found her white and cold in her bed.

Within a day, the news had spread across the kingdom. Little surprise traveled with it. Rumors had been circulating for weeks that the king was growing tired of his second wife and fond of a new concubine.

On the heels of the news of the queen's death came a royal decree: there would be no mourning for her. Anyone found wearing black clothing or a black moon of grief would be punished.

The morning after his mother's death, Sapphire received a summons to appear before his father in the throne room. Red-eyed and miserable, dressed in the darkest blue he could find to give his mother as much mourning as he dared, he went down to the great double doors that opened onto the throne room.

Diamond was there, standing beside their father's throne, white-lipped. He met Sapphire's eyes, and twitched his head forward. Sapphire spotted, between his brother's momentarily parted bangs, the smudge of the black moon that their people used to indicate mourning.

Diamond had defied their father.

Sapphire nearly stumbled at the realization, warmth spreading through his grief-numbed limbs. Diamond hadn't just been feigning his love. He would never have gone to such lengths, risking all of the king's wrath, to honor his stepmother if he had been.

Sapphire collected himself and knelt before the king.

"I will be wed a week hence," said their father. His voice was cold and sharp, as though daring Sapphire to protest. "My sons will accompany me at the wedding to show their blessing of my marriage."

Bile rose in Sapphire's throat. To stand at the wedding of the man who had undoubtedly had his mother _murdered_, so that he could marry the woman for whose sake he had murdered her…

His fists clenched.

"Sapphire should do no such thing."

Diamond's voice was cold and quiet, and clearly not the protest the king had expected. He looked back at Diamond, displeased, until Diamond continued, "Your subjects care nothing for the younger – " In his voice lingered the unspoken implication: _the illegitimate gypsy son_. "–son's blessing. I alone should stand with you, Father."

His eyes flicked once to Sapphire's, and toward the door, as though urging him to leave as soon as he had the chance.

And Sapphire did, slipping away as Diamond began to speak of wedding details.

The further away he got, the more deeply it sank into Sapphire how severe his situation had been. He had been millimeters from losing his cool against their father, and had Diamond not cut in before Sapphire could succumb to the impulse, Sapphire would have lost his head as well as his cool.

He closed his chamber door behind him and inhaled shakily, sliding down the door's ancient, petrified wood to sit on the stone floor.

How had he ever doubted his brother? Diamond, whom Sapphire's own mother had loved and hugged like he was her own child, who had once smiled so easily and warmly, who always stood in front of Sapphire to hide him from their father's view when he was striding in an ill temper through the palace hallways.

Diamond, who had just now saved him from participating in that travesty of a wedding.

Did he know what must have happened to Sapphire's mother? Surely he had realized. He was far more adept at the ways of court, and the ways of their father, than Sapphire was.

And what had it cost him? Sapphire wondered, his heart swelling suddenly with all the loyal affection that he had held for his brother when they were children, no longer alloyed by suspicion. What had it cost his kind, loving brother to become the cold-faced, metal-eyed man so adept and so trusted by their father? Had his brother sacrificed his own better self in order to ingratiate himself to the king so that Sapphire would not suffer?

Sapphire pushed himself back to his feet, stumbling away from the door.

He would not let his brother bear this burden alone any more. He could not let him become any more like their father than he had already been forced to become.

But when Sapphire went to the throne room the next day, requesting an audience with his father-king, Diamond spotted him and drew him aside, into an alcove off the hall.

"What are you doing?" he had hissed, glancing around to make sure they were not listened to, and then at Sapphire. His silver eyes were searching beneath the black crescent on his forehead.

"I am going to help you," Sapphire had said. "If I can occupy Father's attention for some time, you will be able to have some freedom."

Diamond drew up straight, eyes wide and shoulders tense. "I forbid you." His voice was low, commanding. "He will only try to pit us against each other if you appear to be trying to gain his favor as well. It will be a game to him, and he will make sure that you lose."

Sapphire stared at him, anxious, hurt, wanting to argue but too afraid to.

"We must just wait." His brother gripped his arm. "He will be dead soon. Just wait a little longer." Then, like a reassurance, he murmured again, almost to himself. "He will be dead soon."

Within a year, Diamond's prediction came true.

Sapphire should have been happy. He was, for the most part.

But inside, somewhere beneath that happiness, throbbed a pulse of fear.

The king had been found in his quarters, a half-empty vial of poison in his hands, as though he had drugged himself to death.

Sapphire had no doubt that Diamond had had a hand in their father's death.

Just as he had not doubted their father's role in his mother's death.

It was soon after the funeral–at which Diamond forbade anyone from wearing black in mourning–that Diamond declared Nemesis to be an ally of Chaos.

Soon after that, a being called the Wiseman began to frequent Diamond's court.

_The present:_

"I didn't need you to walk me back," Moon said petulantly for the fifth time as they finally landed in the tree outside her window. "I only threw up. It's not like I took a Love-Me chain to the head."

Mask's brows quirked above his mask. "Reminding me of that incident is _not_ the way to make me less overprotective, Serena."

"That reminds me!" Moon pointed at him, pausing halfway across the branch that reached to her window. "You called me Serena while we were at the grocery store! You're going to blow my cover!"

"Sorry, _Sailor Moon_," he drawled. For some reason, his eyes raked down her, and she flushed–but then his eyes went back to her chest. He snorted, putting a gloved hand to his mouth.

She looked down at herself in alarm. "What?"

"Are you going to put that top hat full of vomit down any time soon?"

Sailor Moon flushed, clambering down the rest of the branch to lower her feet onto her window sill.

"You could be nicer to me, you know." She turned around, holding onto the tree branch for balance and pushing her window open with the toe of one boot. "I just threw up, after all."

"I'm sorry, am I supposed to feel sorry for you?" Mask said sweetly. "Because it looked to me like all that stuff you threw up was ice cream. Which means that you skipped track and left me alone with Coach Etoukou just so you could pig out on a milkshake."

"I DIDN'T abandon you with Coach for a milkshake." Sailor Moon lowered herself through her window into her room. Then she poked her head back out through the window. "It was a hot fudge sundae."

She stuck out her tongue, blew a raspberry at him, and hastily shut her window before he could retaliate.

"Who's supposed to be the second-grader here, me or you?" said a voice from behind Sailor Moon as she yanked her window curtains shut.

She spun around. "Rini!"

"Next time, you might want to check that no one's in the room before you drop in here transformed," said the little girl from inside a nest of blankets, eyeing the blonde over the top of her manga.

"I guess so," said Moon sheepishly. "Hey, what are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were training with Dari– " She turned to gesture out the window, then realized. "Oh."

"Exactly," said Rini.

There was a note of something in her voice. Moon turned back, looking at her.

Rini raised her eyebrows back at her the same way Darien did when he was pretending nothing was wrong.

Moon crouched down beside the second-grader. "Is that the new _Mixed Veggies_?"

Rini's response was to clutch the manga to her chest protectively and retreat back under her cave of blankets.

Moon laughed and tugged at the blankets. "Come back out here, you little groundhog!"

"_Groundhog_?" came Rini's voice, muffled but indignant, from beneath her blankets.

Moon succeeded in yanking the blankets off her, revealing the little girl. She made an adorable picture, blinking up at Serena with her long-lashed blue eyes, her face flushed pink and brown hair mussed.

Then she pinched her nose and grimaced, ruining the picture. "Ugh, what's that smell?"

Sailor Moon realized she was still holding Tuxedo Mask's top hat.

"Oops. Um…" She got up, shoved the window open again, and tossed out the hat, vomit and all.

"ODANGO!"

Slowly, she turned back to the window. Wide-eyed, she leaned out, and stared at the…_stuff_-covered superhero still perched on her tree branch.

"Um," she said.

Mask glared at her.

Moon put her hands on her hips. "Well, who asked you to be such a creeper and lurk on my tree branch anyways?"

He just shook his head slowly at her, still glowering. A chunk of something dripped from his hair onto his leg.

Moon cringed.

"I'll remember this," he told her, and disappeared.

"What's he so mad about anyway?" Moon muttered, closing her window again. "He can just detransform and be perfectly clean…"

A knock came at the door. "Serena? Is that you? We heard someone shouting – "

"I'm fine, Mom!" Moon shouted back, running to the door. What story could she use this time? "Me and Rini were just, um, reading a dumpling recipe out loud – "

She cringed at her own weird lie, her hand closing around the doorknob.

Then two small hands shoved her behind the door with incredible force just as it swung open. As her coat rack tumbled into an avalanche on top of her, she remembered that she was still in her Senshi fuku!

"Geeze, another klutz-out, Serena?" said Rini's voice from above her. "We're fine, Ikuko-mama. You better run away before you catch Serena's clumsiness. It's probably contagious."

Moon, waiting with quivering breath, heard her mother laugh and then heard the door close.

She let her head droop. "Oh my gosh. You SAVED me, Rini."

"Honestly, how you kept your identity secret in this house before I came around is beyond me." Rini began pulling the coats off of her.

"I know," said Serena, detransforming and grinning up at her. "That's why I'm going to have to steal you away from Asanuma in the future, remember?"

Instead of smiling, Rini bit her lip.

Serena remembered how the little girl's voice had seemed tight before. Her eyes softened. She had wondered when Rini would finally start to let out some of her grief about the future Asanuma.

_You're just like your dad_, she thought with bittersweet affection, putting a hand to Rini's chin. _Bottling everything up._

Rini let Serena tilt her chin down to meet her eyes, which was more than Serena had expected. And she surprised Serena even further, by speaking before Serena could.

"Buji said I'm a brat for not talking to Asanuma."

Serena digested this, watching Rini's eyes.

"He said–" Rini stumbled, "He said other kids would give anything to be able to spend time with–"

She broke off again and swiped a hand across her nose. A few tears were breaking loose from her wet eyes.

Serena let go of Rini's chin to wipe them away. Then she took Rini's hands and pulled her down into her lap.

Rini surprised her again by coming without resisting, sitting with her head against Serena's shoulder.

Serena's cheek moved against Rini's forehead as she spoke. "Can I tell you something?"

Rini nodded against her shoulder.

"Buji's dad got killed during a youma attack last year."

Rini went very still under her chin.

"Does how he acted make sense now?" Serena asked softly, pulling away to look down at her.

Slowly, Rini nodded.

Serena put her cheek back to the little girl's head. "Do you understand why he's upset with you?"

Another moment of silence, and then Rini's taut, teary "_Yes_."

Serena sighed and pressed a kiss to Rini's hair. She let them sit for a moment longer, then she shifted. "Okay, time to get up before my butt falls asleep." She poked Rini's back. "Help the old lady stand up."

Rini gave an unwilling laugh, climbing to her feet. "You're not old."

Serena grabbed her hand, struggling to her feet, but then she slipped on a parka sleeve. She and Rini both went tumbling to the floor on top of the mountain of coats.

Serena burst into laughter. "You were right! My klutziness IS contagious!"

Rini cracked a smile.

After taking a shower to rinse the Serena-vomit out of his hair, Darien grabbed his phone off the counter. He wanted to see what Mikai had heard about the youma attack on his police radio.

"No one was seriously injured," was Mikai's reply. "Half of the victims are already conscious again. So it was another human youma?"

"Yeah." Darien rubbed his hair with a towel.

"What did it look like?"

Darien frowned, dropping the towel on top of the couch and flopping down on the armchair. Then, with a deeper frown, he got up and took the towel to the bathroom to hang it neatly on the rack. He'd picked up entirely too many sloppy habits from having Serena and Buji at his apartment all the time.

"I didn't ask. Serena was pretty shaken up."

"Yeah, I can understand that," said Mikai feelingly. "Those things are…" He trailed off the same way Serena had at the grocery store. "Intense."

Darien leaned back into the couch, crossing his arms. "Do you have any idea how that sort of thing could be done? Making people into youma?"

"Oh, sure," Mikai said. "Tons. But they're mostly all in the realm of fiction. Zombies or viruses gone wrong or futuristic bio-engineering or something like that. Listen, if you don't think Serena's up to talking to me about it, then find out from her yourself what the youma looked like so you can tell me. I wanna start drafting up a data sheet so we can keep track, maybe pick out some sort of common trait."

Darien briefly had a mental image of them fighting youma, while Mikai stood off to the side in his Shittenou outfit, holding a clipboard and writing down observations. "Yeah, sure."

"And one other thing." Mikai paused.

"Yes?" said Darien suspiciously.

"Can you come by my place tomorrow?"

"…" Darien held the phone away from his ear, looked at it, and put it back to his ear again. "Is this another one of those Brokeback Mountain jokes?"

Mikai laughed. "No, I'm serious."

"Oh," said Darien. "Alright. I'll come by after school." He hung up.

He'd made excuses to Coach Etoukou for Serena's absence that day, now it was her turn to do the same for him. She could just tell him he had a stomach bug, and with the fear about the swine flu, Coach would probably want to drive him to the hospital himself.

On second thought, maybe a different excuse would be better.

He sighed, yawning, and collapsed onto his bed.

Michiru pulled her hair from beneath the Infinity uniform collar and turned to glance at herself in the mirror. Her appearance was as it had been for the past month or so: her hair was dyed from its honey blond to a black more like Rei's had been, and pulled into two severe braids to hide its waviness. She wore thick eyeshadow and brown contacts to cover the aquamarine eyes her agent had always told her were striking.

Haruka had not said anything about the changes other than to say that Asanuma and Serena probably wouldn't recognize her if she saw her. Which was the point, of course, but Michiru had, in her deepest heart of hearts, hoped that when Haruka saw her disguise, she would have done something like thread her fingers through her hair and gaze into her eyes and murmur something about how she knew it was necessary but she wished they hadn't had to hide Michiru's beautiful hair and eyes.

But Haruka hadn't said anything like that. Hadn't _done_ anything like that lately, anything romantic. All Haruka did was follow Asanuma for almost every hour of the day except the afternoons, when she went to track practices with Serena and Michiru took over the Shittenou-surveillance.

Michiru did not feel that she knew Haruka half so well as she had once thought she had – as she had back in high school when Haruka would play with her hair from the desk behind her, or crowd her personal space because it always made Michiru flush and stammer, or even as recently as months ago when after Pluto had visited, they would sit on the couch until late in the night afterward, Haruka just holding onto her, her face in Michiru's hair. But even so, she knew Haruka well enough to know that even as wild as Haruka was to find Rei and Saturn through the Shittenou, Haruka was even more wild to spend those few hours each day in Serena's presence. The rare times that she was with Michiru, her eyes were distant, clearly thinking of something, some_one_ else, and Michiru knew who it was.

Serena.

"She knows how to put that Terran prince in his place. It's adorable, really," she had said to Michiru one day. Affection and even a note of admiration had colored her voice, a fond smile curving her lips beneath distant eyes.

Michiru said nothing. What did one say when one's girlfriend had such an obvious fondness for another girl? She wanted to say something cruel, to say that Serena would never love Haruka, not how Michiru loved her; Serena would never accept her as anything more than another _girl_. If Haruka was entertaining dreams of swooping in and being the crying shoulder for Serena when the prince finally found the princess, she could think again, she wanted to say. She wanted to hurt Haruka as Haruka was hurting her.

But she also wanted to be strong. Strong, like Serena who was at once her rival and her – _almost_ – friend.

But she couldn't bear to lose Haruka. She wasn't like Serena's other friend, Lita, the Senshi Jupiter, who could consider breaking up with Furuhata Motoki for less than what Haruka had done. That brown-haired girl had friends, she had Serena to support her and something to fight for, and Michiru had only…Haruka. Haruka, in whom not just her heart but her entire life – home, Senshi powers, running from Pluto, happiness – were tied up.

As she waited in the Infinity hallway for Asanuma to leave his last class of the day, leaning against the wall, her hair hanging in her face, scuffing her shoes against each other like an awkward schoolgirl, she thought of Rei. Rei might have been her friend, might have become to her what Serena and the girl Lita were to each other. She had thought she saw, sometimes, in the girl's dark, unnerving eyes, a wish for closeness. But Michiru had had Haruka then, had been secure that she would always have Haruka, and that she would never need anything else.

The blond Shittenou slouched out of his class, trailing at the end of the stream of students. He slouched much more often lately, Michiru had noticed in her afternoons of following him, comparing the boy he was now to the passionate boy she remembered from the art classes she taught as his long-term substitute teacher. Now each day, just before he got to the elementary school where he picked up the young boy he trained, he always straightened up, ironing the slump from his shoulders as though he didn't want anyone to notice. When he re-emerged with the boy, he was always grinning, laughing, making wide motions with his arms. It was an act, and Michiru thought that if – when, she corrected herself – she met Rei again, the first thing she would tell her was how this young man missed her, how his shoulders would tense and eyes silently follow any time he glimpsed someone with long dark hair.

As the two boys made their way toward the park, Michiru sensed two human youma presences: one of a normal faceless one and the other the stomach-twisting sensation of one of those human youma, foul like polluted water. She tensed, ready to have to dart quickly after Asanuma when he sensed it and went to fight. But he didn't seem to notice it, just kept talking to the boy with him. Michiru relaxed, but only slightly. Through her power over water, she was more aware than the Shittenou and most of the Senshi of youma presences, a fact that usually made her proud. But today she wished the Shittenou was as adept as her. Then he would have sensed the youma by now and gone to rescue the people it was sucking dry, and she would not have to stand here, feeling guilty for not intervening herself.

It wasn't that she cared, exactly. It was just that she was suddenly picturing Rei's face again, and she could picture the contempt that would curl the younger girl's lips if she could see her. It was the same sort of expression Haruka, the old Haruka whom Michiru had admired and agreed to go out with, would have worn if she saw Michiru staying quiet and allowing innocent people to be hurt.

Asanuma's cell phone buzzed. Michiru sensed the vibrations through the air vapor between them. She edged closer to them on the sidewalk, pretending to be interested in a shop window, frowning a little when she sensed the way the vapor molecules around the little boy, Iwara Bujiro, were condensing.

" – that bridge?" Asanuma was saying into his phone, distracting Michiru's attention from the boy. "Yeah, I'm right nearby! I'll be there in a sec."

He shoved the phone back in his pocket and looked down at the boy. "Mikai said there's a youma right near here. Go to Elysion, okay?"

"But I can fight!" began the little boy eagerly.

"Buji!" Asanuma said warningly. "We had a deal!"

The boy subsided and vanished without even a spark of lights. Michiru had only time to wonder if that strange ability was why the water molecules around him acted so strangely before she repeated a similar trick herself, stepping into an alley and disippating into water droplets herself, a diffuse cloud of vapor that followed Asanuma to one of the concrete bridges that traversed one of Juuban Ward's man-made rivers.

There were people, mostly middle-school children just released from school, sprawled across the gently sloping grassy bank, some slumped on the bridge itself. A large number of them were clumped around a softly glowing silver shape, lying unconscious one on top of each other as though they had been crowding around it. Michiru wanted to look at whatever it was more closely, noting that the silver shape was about the size of a human, but Asanuma was catapulting himself under the bridge. She could sense the faceless youma huddled there, as though people must have wandered toward the silver shape to see what it was, not realizing the energy-sucking youma was present, and then been caught by its draining spell.

She heard shouts and felt flashes of fire, burning away the water vapor under the bridge. Michiru, still in her vapor form, dared not get too close, lest part of her be evaporated away as well. Instead, she shifted carefully into her Senshi form and clung to the edge of the bridge like a star fish, peeking around the concrete wall.

The youma, smoking faintly, slammed into Asanuma. He flew backward, toward the white shape. Somehow – whether by chance or through some sort of gravity exerted by the shape – he landed right on top of it – and his eyes went silver, and he went still.

The youma swung around, toward Michiru. She went dead still, heart thumping. For all that the youma had no face, she could swear it was staring at her.

Then it disappeared. The energy it had consumed went with it. Not moving from her spot, barely moving a muscle, Michiru looked back at where Asanuma had landed. The silver light was fading from his eyes like water down a drain, and as he sat up, shakily, holding a hand to his head, she saw that the silvery shape beneath him had vanished.

Asanuma twisted around, looking beneath him as though noting the same thing. Then Michiru sensed presences arriving, a whole group of them: the Terran prince with his tight control of the water molecules in the air around him; Serena with her thick meters of hair that vapor loved to cling to; and, behind them, aura cloaked but presence detectable to Michiru because no one felt quite the same as her, with a faint breeze constantly dancing around her, dancing with the water vapor, Haruka.

They were all transformed. Tuxedo Mask and Sailor Moon landed beside Asanuma, the former glancing around at all the unconscious people.

"Another human youma?" asked Serena quietly as Haruka landed beside Michiru, her fuku fluttering.

"Yeah, a woman. She was – " Asanuma motioned an uncertain hand, and Michiru stared at him intently, trying not to be affected by Haruka's warmth close beside her, their arms brushing. " – all silver. Glowing. It seemed like she was sleeping, or something, all curled up – "

"Serena's power," muttered Haruka. Her gloved fist clenched against the concrete. She didn't seem to have noticed her proximity to Michiru at all.

Michiru looked back at Serena. Haruka had kept her updated on Tomoe's experiments, and they had both wondered when Tomoe would use Serena's power. He had already used all the other Senshi and Shittenou samples he had.

" – totally knocked me for a loop." Asanuma was rapping the side of his head now, like he had gotten water stuck in it and was trying to knock it out. "It didn't really do anything else."

"It's not fair," Serena was saying, clenching her fists. "How could anyone turn people into – into –"

Ambulance sirens began to sound in the distance.

" – what they're not meant to be," finished Serena lamely. She lowered her hands and looked at Mask and Asanuma, both of whom were watching her sympathetically. She sighed. "There's no point going back to practice. I'll just go get Rini."

The sirens were growing louder. Michiru looked expectantly at Haruka.

The other Senshi was already sliding down from the side of the bridge, eyes on the direction Serena had taken. "Follow Ittou a little longer for me," she said. "I'll be along in an hour or so."

Michiru swallowed and turned her attention back to Asanuma.

"It's open!" came Mikai's shout, accompanied by the ruffle of papers, as Darien knocked on his door an hour later.

Darien walked inside, easing his shoes off at the front mat. He stood there for a second, rubbing his face. His sleep the night before had _not_ been peaceful, and the youma attack that afternoon, where he had missed seeing the human youma _again_, hadn't helped. But he pushed away his tiredness and walked toward Mikai's living room.

The room doubled as a miniature computer lab. Mikai had two desktop computers and two laptops on there, along with enough computer accessories to stock a shop in Akihabara.

Mikai himself was currently positioned in front of one of the desktops, one foot planted on his swivel chair as he hovered alternately over the desktop's screen and over a map that was spread across the arm of a couch. More than half of the map, which depicted Tokyo's central wards, was outlined in thick black marker, and Post-It notes layered across it as thick and overlapping as snake scales.

Darien nodded toward it. "Those are all the places we've looked?"

Mikai nodded, marking one last spot on the map before he straightened up, his back popping. "Useless, huh? The more I think about it, the more idiotic it seems to think that Ami's in Tokyo at all. If she's really running from something or if she's been kidnapped, she'd be in Madagascar or Antarctica or something. Anywhere _but_ here."

Darien had privately been thinking the same for the past few days. But he said the same thing he had said to Serena, when she realized this, consolingly. "The best place to hide is right under someone's nose."

Mikai clicked his tongue stud against his teeth. "Maybe."

"Something I've been wanting to ask." Darien put his hand to the map, eyes half-closed, tracing the thick black lines. He could trace them without looking at them; the stench of the permanent marker was as obvious in his senses as the raised ridge of mountains on a topographical globe would have been. "What makes you so sure it was Ami you heard, not Mercury?"

"She called me Kentaro-san."

At the unenlightened expression on Darien's face, Mikai flashed a brief, tight grin. "Mercury wouldn't've addressed me that formally. It was always _Stupid Terran_ this, or _Idiot_ _Shittenou_ that. Or just _Mikai_. Which she seemed to consider insult enough." He gave a little laugh.

Darien found this evidence convincing enough. Although he hadn't hung out with Serena much while Ami was still her friend and not an ally of her would-be assassins, he could remember that it had taken weeks for Serena to convince the girl to call her by her name instead of by "Tsukino-san."

The question remained, however, why Ami and not the Mercurian flash-form, had apparently been in control. Had the woman who came and stopped Jupiter's – and, briefly, Endymion's – flash-forms from emerging also reached Mercury? Or had Ami herself taken control? If so, would she try to return to Juuban?

Darien regretted now not having tried harder to make Mikai let him talk to Mercury. He had let himself become too distracted by his happiness and then angsting over Serena.

"Any theories about what happened to her?" he asked Mikai now.

His green-haired friend ran a hand through his bangs again.

Then he went to the kitchen, returned with two bottles of soda, handed one to Darien, and sat down on the couch.

"Mercury was worried about something. She didn't say anything, but she was tense." Mikai untwisted his soda bottle's cap, letting the carbonation hiss out.

Then he twisted the cap back on again without taking a drink. "She was training Rei for something."

Darien felt his eyes flare.

"I know, I know. I didn't tell you guys about Rei." Mikai wouldn't meet Darien's molten glare. But his voice stayed steady. "Mercury told me not to."

Darien closed his eyes. "And you listened to her why?"

Mikai ignored him. Darien heard him untwist his soda cap again. "I think she sent Rei after Sailor Saturn."

"You realize that Asanuma ran out on New Year's to look for Rei." Darien still hadn't opened his eyes. On the backs of his eyelids, he was watching the Asanuma from the future, bloody and half blind, looking up at him and choking out his last breath.

If Mikai had told them about Rei before this, Asanuma would have known where she was. He wouldn't have run off to Bancho Ward on New Year's Eve. He would have been at the party, he would have come with them to get Rini, and Darien would have been able to heal his future self, and he wouldn't have _died_ –

His eyelids clenched more tightly shut. "Why are youtelling me this _now_?"

"Because before, Mercury was keeping track of everything," Mikai said. "She knew what was going on and made sure the right things happened. And I was hoping that with all this patrolling, we would find her, but we haven't. So now I'm telling you what I know because without her around, _we_'re the ones who need to make sure that the right things happen and the wrong things don't."

Darien opened his eyes, forcing himself to ignore the images that had played on his eyelids. "Is Rei the Rei we know? Or is she Sailor Mars?"

"She's Rei."

"Why would Mercury send her for Saturn?" Darien was all business now, shooting off sharp questions. "And why Saturn instead of a different Senshi? Did they know where Saturn was?"

"I think they knew where she was," Mikai said. "They talked about going to get her as if it was a matter of when, not if. I couldn't find out who she was, though."

Was Rei supposed to bring Saturn back to Juuban when she got her? Darien thought. So far both she and Mercury had kept away from Serena and Lita. What were the two rogue girls' intentions toward his friends? Why hadn't they come to help their fellow Senshi? Or at least let them know that they were alive?

Mikai had said that Mercury was on their side. But nothing that she had done so far supported that fact. And nothing short of seeing her throw herself in front of an attack meant for Sailor Moon would convince Darien that Rei didn't still have it in for Serena.

Darien didn't really expect Mikai to know, but he asked anyway. "What kind of powers does Saturn have?"

Mikai answered immediately. "She's the Senshi of Death."

Darien absorbed this silently. The beads of condensation from his cold bottle of soda trickled down his fingers. "I take it that means that they want to get her for more than just the reason that she's the next Senshi that they happened to find, then."

Mikai nodded.

"But you don't think Mercury went with Mars."

"No." Mikai shook his head. "She was training Mars to go without her."

"Do you think she knew that Ami was going to take over?"

"Maybe." Mikai's arms were crossed close to his chest, as though he was shielding a vulnerable spot. "But that doesn't explain why _Ami_ seemed so scared when she called out to me. You'd think she'd be happy to be in control of her body again."

Darien's mind went to the wan, anxious girl he remembered. Serena's friend and first fellow Senshi had never seemed to have much will to live. It seemed doubtful that a wish for survival would do the trick when she had had so little will to live to begin with.

Then he realized something as he took in again Mikai's posture, which seemed almost protective. "You think someone went after her."

"I do." Mikai spoke grimly. "Mercury had her own agenda. But she was supposed to be working under another Senshi."

The incredulous anger roiled up in Darien again. He couldn't believe that Mikai had kept so much from them. He shut his eyes again. He was honestly going to strangle the man when they were through.

But for now, the image of glaring red eyes and a black-and-white fuku dominated his thoughts. "A High Senshi?" he said.

Mikai twisted his soda cap again. "If Sailor Pluto's a High Senshi."

Silence reigned for several heartbeats as Darien absorbed this.

Abruptly, Mikai said, "You remember how you got your sight back?"

Darien almost quirked a smile. Ice shards had torn through his eyeballs. "Kind of hard to forget."

"That was Mercury. They were Bertie's ice crystals, but Mercury reversed their direction to hit you so that your eyes would heal. She thought Endymion's flash-form wouldn't surface as easily if you could see." This time, Mikai didn't pause to let Darien absorb his words; he spoke fast, almost anxiously. "Sailor Pluto wasn't supposed to know that Mercury had interfered like that. She was supposed to think it just happened by chance when Bertie shot the ice. But the last I saw of Mercury, she was flipping out because she was sure that when you guys found out I'd been working with her, Sailor Pluto would find out that Mercury's been interfering with us."

Hearing Mikai speak so quickly, nothing like the relaxed, calm person he always was, was turning Darien's anger into concern.

"So you think Pluto did find out and went after her?" he said.

Mikai stood up without answering and went to the ice-frosted window. He pressed his hand to it.

"You said Mercury had her own agenda," Darien pushed. "What's Pluto's agenda?"

Mikai stepped away from the window and went to one of his computer desks. He grabbed one of the folders sitting beside the keyboard.

"I have a list," he said. "I had to write it all down so I could tell it to you. It gets a bit confusing otherwise." He opened the folder, revealing a sheaf of paper with a bulleted list printed down the first page. "You guys said you think the moon princess might have committed suicide, right?"

Darien rubbed his eyes again. He didn't like to remember that conversation. He just nodded.

"Well," said Mikai. "It seems like she did. Or something equally unforgivable, at least. Something bad enough that she had a one-way ticket to hell when she died."

Darien put down his soda.

"The reason she didn't is because somehow back then her mom, the queen, used the Silver Crystal to send her soul to be reincarnated before it could go to hell. The Senshi and Endymion got reincarnated along with her because the Senshi's souls were bound to hers and because Endymion was her soul mate."

Mikai said that last word with sarcastic emphasis and sneaked a look at his friend. Darien's expression–eyes closed, mouth tight–did not change.

With a sigh, Mikai continued. "So the Moon Princess only got out of going to hell then because the queen interfered. When she dies in this lifetime, there won't be a queen to save her. She'll go to hell, and you can't be reincarnated from there. Which means that if Chaos somehow kills the princess before she kills Chaos, the princess'll go to hell and not be able to be reborn. You and the Senshi will end up there with her, and there won't be anyone alive able to beat Chaos.

"Sailor Pluto," Mikai continued after a pause, "wants to make sure that doesn't happen. She wants to get Sailor Saturn and awaken her because Saturn has the power to keep the princess's soul from going to hell if she dies."

His hands clenched at his knees, Darien gathered himself enough to ask, "If Mercury sent Rei after Saturn, why did Pluto want to stop them?"

"It's not that Pluto stopped them from getting Saturn. It's that Mercury and Rei stopped _Pluto_ from getting Saturn."

"I don't understand. Mercury doesn't want to make sure the princess won't go to hell?"

"One thing I haven't mentioned yet." Mikai grimaced. "Part of being the Senshi of Death means that when Saturn awakens, the planet she's on goes kaput."

At Darien's expression, he elaborated: "Immediate apocalypse."

And Saturn was here, Darien realized. On Earth.

"_Mercury_'s trying to keep _my_ planet from getting destroyed?"

"No need to sound so shocked," said Mikai with a touch of his usual wry humor. "I told you she was on our side."

One of the Senshi–not just that, one of the _flash-forms_–was trying to protect his planet. She was trying to protect it even at the cost of her princess's immortal soul. The concept was too impossible for Darien to wrap his mind around. Even Serena, who had never met the princess, was trying to find her and keep her safe. Why would Mercury, who, if she was anything like Venus, had to be rabidly loyal to the moon princess, be doing something that would compromise the princess's soul?

He didn't realize that he had gotten up and begun to pace until he opened his eyes to look at Mikai.  
"So Pluto finds Saturn and awakens her to make sure the princess won't go to hell," he said. "What then? She must already know who the princess is and have her somewhere safe, or she wouldn't risk waking Saturn and getting the princess killed in the resulting, uh, apocalypse."

"She knows," confirmed Mikai. "Pluto wasn't reincarnated like the other Senshi. She's been alive since the Silver Millennium. She's the one who put mind-blocks on you and all the Senshi, even Venus when she came back to life, so none of you would remember the princess."

He hesitated. "So…you might already have met the princess and not recognized her as who she is because Pluto's so hell-bent on concealing her until Saturn's been awakened."

Darien wasn't sure what expression his face wore. But whatever it was, it seemed to unnerve Mikai, who looked away and said, "Once Pluto wakes Saturn up, she's going to release the princess's flash-form. It'll take over whoever she was reincarnated into and go off to fight Chaos."

Darien refused to let himself think about the person into whose body the princess had been reincarnated. The person who contained her, the same way that he contained Endymion, the person whose life would suddenly shatter, maybe without her even knowing it, as a super-powerful being took her over and used her body for a suicide mission. He refused to feel pity for her, or any sense of sympathy, because if he did, he would feel close to her. It was what he had always sworn to himself he wouldn't do and what he had always been afraid of doing, because from feeling pity or sympathy for her, it might be a short and slippery slope to loving her.

Abruptly, he realized that Mikai was watching him. He quickly ironed his face smooth. The hairs on the backs of his hands had lifted; he became aware for the first time that the room was chilly. A wind blew through it from Mikai's half-open window, sending a folder and papers by his laptop flying to the carpet.

Mikai lunged for them, snatching them up. Darien, still concentrating on keeping his face and mind blank, went to close the window.

"Sorry about that," said Mikai with a bright grin when he had all the papers shoved into a folder, which he stuffed into a bag at the foot of the couch. "I shouldn't have had that window open, huh?"

Darien shook his head distractedly. "Do you have anything else you need to tell me?"

"Nope," said Mikai.

Darien didn't push any further, wanting this conversation to end before Mikai could make him to think about the princess anymore.

He closed his eyes. "Then the moral of this story is that we need to find Sailor Saturn before anyone else does."

He felt Mikai nod.

"Right." He opened his eyes. "Alright. I'll pick everyone up early for school tomorrow and tell them what you've told me. You're already looking for Saturn, I assume?"

Mikai nodded again, and Darien left.

"So this Sailor Pluto could find Saturn at any time?" Lita leaned forward in the back seat.

They were all in Darien's car for their morning commute to Infinity. Darien had just finished summarizing what Mikai had told him.

"Yes," he said. "And as soon as she does, she'll probably wake up the princess's flash-form, and that will pull ours to the surface, too. So if any of you feels _any_ sign of them coming out – "

"I don't know why you're bothering to tell US," said Asanuma from beside Serena. "You and Lita are the only ones with flash-forms. And we already know that YOU're not going to tell us if Endymion starts acting up."

Darien's previous concealment of Endymion's attempts to take over was clearly still a sore spot with Asanuma. It was probably made all the sorer by the blond finding out that Mikai had known all this time where Rei was.

But Darien was prevented from feeling bad about Asanuma's remark by the little ripples of shock that kept radiating to him from Serena through the rope like shivers.

He glanced at her in the rearview mirror and saw that she had her eyes locked on Lita's, as though the two were silently communicating. Both of their expressions looked troubled.

"Come to think of it," said Motoki abruptly. "Isn't that weird? That Serena's the only one without a flash-form?"

"I don't think she doesn't have a flash-form," said Asanuma, still glowering at Darien. "I think that _she_'s too strong to let her flash-form take over."

Serena's eye contact with Lita was broken as she heard this and blinked, looking over at Asanuma. She did not look half so pleased as she should. "That's not nice, Numa."

Darien turned to look at her full-on. "It's probably true."

They all blinked at him.

Then Serena squeaked, Lita screeched, Motoki shouted, and Asanuma seized the steering wheel.

"What are you turned around for, you IDIOT?" Lita demanded of Darien. "We're in a CAR!"

"I don't need to see to be able to drive," Darien said. It was true; being blind for so long, he'd grown so accustomed to sensing things–the ground, plants, people–that he could drive without watching the road.

"To not get pulled over by a cop you do!" retorted Asanuma. "Turn around!"

Darien obeyed, but his eyes stayed on Serena's in the rearview mirror.

His suspicion that something was up only increased when, almost before he stopped the car in its parking space in the Infinity garage, Serena grabbed Lita's hand and dragged her upstairs at a breakneck speed, gabbling something about girl problems.

She was such a bad liar.

Darien got out of the car, glowering after the two girls with as deep a scowl as Asanuma.

Motoki sighed when he saw Darien's face. "What is it?"

"They're avoiding him, duh." Asanuma was glaring at Darien all the more fiercely now, as if he'd been the one to drive away Serena and Lita.

Motoki took his time getting his school bag out of the car trunk, then retying his shoes.

At last, he mumbled, "They might not be avoiding us because of Darien."

"Who ELSE smells bad enough to drive them off?" said Asanuma, still glowering at Darien, who was ignoring him, his eyes unfocused as he tried to glean information from Serena through the rope.

"Lita broke up with me last night."

Asanuma swung around. "WHAAAAT?"

"We broke up," Motoki repeated. "So maybe they just took off because they didn't want things to be awkward."

"Awkward?" Asanuma echoed. He stared at Motoki.

Then his hands came up to fist in his blond curls. "Awkward," he said again. "Are you LISTENING to yourself? Lita just broke up with you, and you're sitting back and letting her leave because she doesn't want things to be AWKWARD?"

Motoki didn't say anything. He just shifted and put his bag over his shoulder. Then, after fiddling with his straps for several moments, he glanced over at Darien.

The black-haired man was watching him with his usual piercing gold gaze. After a minute, he said quietly, "Are you alright?"

Motoki ducked his head. "Yeah. I mean, I understand why–"

"Why aren't you going AFTER her?" Asanuma half shouted, yanking at his hair. "Does everyone in this pseudo-family of ours have some mental allergy to being HAPPY?"

"–she did it," Motoki finished, still looking at Darien. "I'm fine. Really."

Darien watched him for a moment longer as Asanuma made frustrated sounds and shook Motoki by the shoulders. Then he reached into his pocket, took out his car keys, and handed them to Motoki. With the same movement, he seized Asanuma by his jacket hood and began pulling him toward the elevators.

"Hey!" Motoki could hear Asanuma yell, struggling.

Darien said something back that Motoki couldn't hear.

Then they were swallowed by the other kids heading inside.

Motoki looked down at the keys in his palm.

He knew that he should put them in his pocket and go inside. First period was going to start in a few minutes.

Instead, he got into the Mustang's driver's seat.

"It doesn't make sense," said Lita as soon as they ducked into a girls' bathroom and checked the stalls to make sure they were empty. "Miss Lanai told you she was Sailor Pluto, right?" At Serena's nod, she said, "So why would she be working with Mercury and Mars and not tell you?"

Serena was frowning. "She did ask me about Mercury once. She wanted to know what her strongest attack was the last time I saw her."

"So maybe she hadn't found Ami yet at that point?" guessed Lita. "But that doesn't explain why she didn't tell you she was working with Mercury, too. And why she's been in contact with Ami this whole time but not with you."

Serena's stomach was sinking. She could think of exactly why Miss Lanai had kept Ami and Rei secret from her. And of why, if she had returned from her trip and resumed contact with Mercury, she hadn't done the same with Serena.

"She told me to stay away from Darien," Serena said quietly. She turned her head so that she wouldn't see her reflection in the spotless mirror. "But I haven't. If anything, I've gotten closer to him."

Lita grimaced and sighed. "Serena, I still don't buy that bullshit that you seduced Endymion in the past. It's not something you would do."

Serena wanted to crawl under Lita's stubborn words and hide under them like they were a blanket so that she would not have to acknowledge the truth lurking outside.

But she knew what she felt when she looked at Darien, and she knew how much she had wanted him to draw her down and kiss her that day in his kitchen when his hands were warm at her waist.

Maybe Lita saw the progression of guilt across Serena's face, because she leaned forward, gripped Serena's shoulders, and said firmly, "Serena, Lanai lied to you."

Serena met Lita's dark green eyes steadily.

"Even if you did seduce Darien in the past, which is _bullcrap_," emphasized Lita, "Lanai told you that the princess put mind blocks on us because she was afraid you were going to betray her. But Mikai said that _Pluto_–" She paused to crook her fingers into quotation marks, "–is the one blocking our memories of the princess."

Serena opened her mouth to give a reason for this.

"No!" Lita threw up a hand fiercely. "You're not going to justify that to me, Serena. Lanai lied to you, and that's that. If she lied to you about one thing, then she could be lying about everything."

A tiny butterfly of hope fluttered up in Serena's heart. She shook her head, trying to slap it down before it could take to the air. There was no reason for Miss Lanai to lie to her about having seduced Endymion in the past. The older Senshi wasn't that cruel.

"Anyway." Lita lowered her hand, attempting a smile. She squeezed some soap out of the dispenser by the sink into her hand and sniffed it. Then, making a face, she rinsed it off. "Darien picked up that you were freaking out about something. What's our cover story going to be?"

Serena regarded her best friend with eyes widened by hope and disbelief.

"You're still okay with not telling him about–" _Miss Lanai and the fact that I betrayed the princess and seduced his past self_ "–everything?"

"Serena." Lita gave her a Look. "You haven't made me feel bad even once for breaking up with Toki even though you must think I'm crazy. Why would I stick my big nose into this sticky business between you and Darien?"

Serena hugged Lita's arm to her. "You're the best, Lita." She paused, tilting her head. "We're like – what's that saying? Hos before bros?"

Lita burst into snorts of laughter.

The living room, where his father usually sat, watching TV or mulling over business papers, when Motoki got home from his after-school work, was empty. It made Motoki's chest feel tight, like the times when he was little and had gotten lost in the supermarket and couldn't find his parents.

But the sound of heavy breathing made itself known to his senses, and he followed it to his parents' bedroom to find his father lying in the bed. His chest moved shallowly. He was still in his pajamas.

His dark-ringed eyes fluttered open when Motoki eased the door wider. "Motoki," he rasped. "What are you doing home?"

Motoki lied, "We had a free period."

His dad closed his eyes. "Even Serena-chan can lie better than you."

Motoki sat down on the edge of the bed. He thought of lying and fighting youma and making Lita happy. "Serena can do a lot of things better than me, Dad."

His dad inhaled deeply and then exhaled it out again. His chest barely moved beneath the comforter. "Aw, who cares," he muttered. "I don't want my kids to know how to lie, anyway. You're a good boy, Toki."

"Dad."

"A good son."

"_Dad_," said Motoki again. He wanted him to stop. This sounded too much like some sort of deathbed blessing.

"You're gonna be a good dad, too," his father continued, ignoring him. "_If_ you ever screw up the balls to do the deed."

When Motoki didn't say anything, his dad's eyes cracked open. "What, no red-faced '_Daaaad_!'?"

Motoki mustered a smile as his eyes and throat burned. "Maybe I've already done 'the deed.' "

His dad began to laugh. The sound was rattling, thick with mucus, but it was genuine. "Furuhata Motoki, the day you do pop the cherry, I'll know. It's not something you can hide from your old man."

Motoki was smiling genuinely now. "What are you going to do, follow me around to make sure you witness it?"

"Ha! I won't need to! You'll be grinning like such an idiot that I'll be able to tell."

Motoki tried to laugh but pressed his lips together instead. He wouldn't cry. If he couldn't be enough of a man to fight youma or to show his true feelings to Lita, he had to at least be enough of a man not to cry in front of his dad.

He had to at least do that.

Lita was summoned to the judo room at lunch, and Asanuma went to the parking garage with his cell phone clutched tightly in his hand, presumably to chew Mikai out for not telling him where Rei was.

Since Motoki had yet to return, this left a squirming Serena alone with a suspicious Darien at their usual lunch table in the cafeteria.

Darien surprised Serena though, by asking her not about her reaction to that morning's conversation. Instead, the question he asked was, "Lita really broke up with Motoki?"

Serena could hear the disapproval in his voice. "Yes," she said defensively.

Steam curled up from his cup of coffee as he stirred it. "I thought they were 'meant to be?' "

"And if they're not?" Serena said. "Lita's really hurting right now. Isn't it better for her to break it off now if they might not be meant to be after all?"

Darien put down his spoon. He was regarding her with a slightly bemused expression, his brow creased above his exhaustion-smudged eyes. "Am I really talking to the Odango right now? The champion of love and justice who spent all of last April trying to get Motoki to break up with Reika and go out with Lita because she was convinced they were _meant to be_?"

Serena stirred her tomato soup without meeting his eyes.

Darien sat back in his chair again. "No."

Serena looked up. "No what?"

"No, I don't think it's better that they stop dating because they might not be meant to be," he said. "What dictates whether they're meant to be? If they like each other now, they like each other now. Even if they _were_ 'meant to be,' that wouldn't guarantee that they would still love each other in the future."

Darien paused and took a long sip from his coffee. Above the rim, his golden eyes burned into her.

He lowered the cup from his lips. "We know that better than anyone."

Serena choked on her soup. She began to cough, violently, tears springing to her eyes.

A hand touched her back, not thumping her between the shoulders but merely touching her. She felt the soup that had gone the wrong way down her windpipe evaporate helpfully.

She opened teary eyes to see Darien crouched beside her. He was looking at her intently, almost forcefully. Almost – possessively.

His golden eyes, as hot as the warmth she felt traveling down her insides, searched hers like he was reading something written in them.

Then he rose to his feet.

"Come on," he said. "Coach wanted us to get to gym early today."

Serena followed him out of the cafeteria, her fingers creeping up to press against the star-shaped locket hanging from her neck. Lita's words filled her mind: "_If she lied to you about one thing, she could be lying about a lot of things."_

"So!" boomed Coach Etoukou. "I hope you're all packed, because as I'm SURE you know, we're heading out for our first OFFICIAL meet tomorrow."

He handed around sheets of paper to each of them. The papers had sets of name and items listed beneath them. Darien raised a brow at his, vaguely surprised to see that Coach knew how to type.

"As you can see, right now Tsukino's doing the eight hundred meter and all the sprints, plus the mixed relay with Shields. Saori, you're doing the long distance races right now, but if you don't shave some time off of it–"

Saori crumpled her paper into a ball and dropped it on the ground.

All eyes swung to her.

"This is ridiculous," the dark-haired girl. "Kobayashi and I have done the mixed relay for Infinity for the past six years. Now all of a sudden _you_ come, and these–" she eyed Serena with distinct distaste, "–_amateurs_ get to take over our races?"

Coach Etoukou began to bluster something.

Saori shot him an icy look and pivoted sharply. "I'm going to speak with Principal Knight. Anyone else who feels that this matter is being handled inappropriately can follow me."

Kobayashi glanced behind him at the others. Then he shrugged with a small grin and jogged after Saori.

Sei Le fingered his cell phone without moving.

Serena opened her mouth, looking at Coach and then at Darien. The latter gave her a little shrug. He was, thankfully, quite indifferent to the whole situation.

Serena gave him a look back that clearly said, _This isn't right_!

"Coach, I," she began.

But Etoukou blew his whistle, motioning her, Darien and Tennou onto the track. Then he stalked toward the locker rooms.

Serena hurried after him, but he waved her off.

With another look back at Darien, she changed direction and ran after Saori and the others.

This left Darien alone with Haruka Tennou.

Who raised an eyebrow at him, mouth quirking up. "Aren't you going to follow Sailor Serena to right the wrongs?"

Darien narrowed his eyes at the other boy. Then he headed after Serena.

The little gaggle of protesters had already reached the elevator by the time he caught up. He darted through the closing elevator doors, bumping into a sour-looking Saori, and shimmied away from her to Serena, who stood fidgeting in her own bubble of space in the corner. Then they all stood silently, waiting to reach the top floor.

Before they did, though, Serena spoke up.

"Um, Saori-san," she said. "Maybe we don't need to go see the principal? I'd like it if you did the sprints. You're really good at them–"

"Did I ask for your help?" said Saori coolly without turning around.

Darien raised an eyebrow. "It's not called help. It's called being an adult by trying to fix your own problems before going to whine to someone about them."

He sensed Saori flush. But she didn't say anything. Nor did she seem, when the elevator doors finally chimed and slid apart, particularly fazed. She strode out into the atrium with her usual brusque grace.

"God, she's like Rei," he muttered in annoyance, stepping out after Serena. He, personally, didn't see why they needed to bother placating a spoiled high schooler for a sports event that they didn't even care about when there were far more significant things on their plate.

Like, for example, the fact that not half an hour ago, he had practically told Serena to her face that he loved her.

Just thinking about it made his pulse speed up again. He sneaked a look at her, not knowing whether to feel relieved or disappointed by the fact that his daring (i.e., rash and stupid) words had led to nothing.

"Miss Tsukino," said one of the secretaries, spotting them from her desk. "Mr. Shields, Miss Saori. Oh, and Mr. Kobayashi. How can we help you?"

Saori stepped past the rest of them. "I need to speak to Principal Knight."

"She is on the phone at the moment," said the light-haired secretary, smiling. "But I will tell her that you wished to speak to her, and if she has time later on, I will use the intercom to call you out of class. May I have your student ID number?"

As she began to take down an irate-faced Saori's information, the secretary across from her, Ms. Purinu, leaned forward.

"Miss Tsukino, Mr. Shields, what can I help _you_ with?"

Serena skittered forward, glancing over her shoulder at Saori. "We came to see the principal as well."

"Oh," said Ms. Purinu. "Well." She beckoned them both closer, until they stood right in front of her desk, and pressed a button on the telephone keypad beside her keyboard.

One of the buttons lit up. "Yes?"

"Mrs. Knight, Serena Tsukino and Darien Shields wish to speak to you."

There was barely a pause. "Send them in."

Serena's eyes swung to Darien's, then back to Saori. "But," she began.

"Go ahead," said Ms. Purinu, smiling warmly.

Darien saw the darkening of Serena's eyes that always signaled she had made a decision. One second she was standing beside him, and the next, she was darting under his arm and seizing Saori's, pulling the other girl into Mrs. Knight's office with her.

Darien, his mouth curving slightly at the secretary's expression, glanced at Kobayashi to see if he would follow, then headed after Serena himself. He heard the other boy fall into step behind him.

Inside the office, Mrs. Knight was smiling, but it seemed slightly forced. "I see you brought guests, Miss Tsukino and Mr. Shields."

"Actually, I'm the one who wanted to speak with you, Mrs. Knight." Saori stepped forward. "It's about the new track coach. Mr. Etoukou."

"Yes, I've received your e-mails, Miss Saori." Knight's voice was frosty. "All eight of them."

Saori tensed but pushed onward. "Then you know that Etoukou has completely upset the way we've always done things."

"I know that Coach Etoukou has arranged the track meet assignments in a way that will give Infinity's team the best chance of winning," said Mrs. Knight. "If you wish to be given preference over Miss Tsukino in these assignments, then I suggest you work harder and not waste your practice time by coming here to waste _my_ time."

Saori backpedaled, flushing.

Serena stepped forward, lifting an arm to touch the other girl's shoulder. Even Darien, who firmly disliked Saori, felt a pang of pity for her.

But he didn't feel enough pity to stay quiet when he saw Serena looking hard at Mrs. Knight and opening her mouth to say something. No way was he going to let the ire that stupid girl had stirred up be redirected onto Serena.

"We'll be going now," he said, cutting off anything Serena would have said. He lifted his hand to the small of her back to nudge her out of the room.

But she was reaching toward Saori. "Saori-san–"

The other girl jerked away, sending Serena a look of venom. She turned on her heel sharply, as sharply as she had to leave the gym a few minutes earlier, and strode out of the office.

Kobayashi lifted his eyebrows, rocking back on his heels with his hands in his pockets. He let out a low whistle.

Serena cast a confused, betrayed look at Principal Knight, as though she'd had some higher expectation for the woman. Then she left the room without saying anything.

Mrs. Knight didn't look at all fazed: she merely sat back down to her desk with a cordial glance at Darien and Kobayashi. Darien, however, knowing Serena as well as he did, recognized just how disrespectful Serena's action had been for her. Even when she had spoken to Seiko or to Dr. Tomoe, she had treated them politely, saying goodbye before she left. For Serena to walk out of Knight's office without saying anything showed a level of anger that Darien rarely saw from her.

It was rather exciting, actually.

He followed the path of flowery scent that her hair had left behind in the air, noting that she had taken the stairs and not the elevator. It didn't take him long to catch up, but when he did, it was clear that she didn't want to talk: she gave him a Look, no doubt annoyed that he had kept her from giving Principal Knight a Champion of Justice speech.

The thought made him smile. He put his hands in his pockets and followed her down the stairs.

Rini found it hard to meet Buji's eyes in class that day. Nakahara-sensei had started sending the two of them to desks in the back of the room to work ahead in the math book while she taught the regular math to the other kids. Usually, Buji started chatting as soon as they got to the back of the room and had to be told to pipe down. But today, he slid into his desk without even looking at Rini, much less talking to her.

Rini's stomach bubbled with anxiety. Not sure exactly what she was going to say but needing to say _something_, she cleared her throat.

Buji raised his hand. Without looking over at her, he said loudly, "Nakahara-sensei, I need to go to the clinic."

Their young teacher looked over, concern creasing her face. "You don't feel well?"

"Uh-uh." Buji really did have a strange expression on his face. Rini had read it as him being mad at her, but maybe he really was ill. He was holding his stomach.

"Okay," said Nakahara-sensei, going to her desk and writing out a pass. "Go on ahead to the clinic." She handed him the slip of paper and looked at Rini. "Tsukino, could you please go with him and make sure he gets there alright?"

Rini looked uncertainly at Buji. Looking at the classroom door instead of at her, his lips pressed together, he looked remarkably like Darien. She didn't know whether to go with him like Nakahara-sensei asked or to make an excuse and have another kid go.

Buji pushed away from his desk and headed out the door before she could make her decision, so she grabbed the hall pass and hurried after him. She stayed a step him behind all the way down the hallway and to the second-floor stair landing, where he stopped abruptly and turned around.

"I'm not going to the clinic. You can just go back."

Rini's insides were twisting even worse than before. It had seemed so easy, when she was in Serena's lap, to come up with what she would say to Buji. She had even been half-sure that by this morning he would have forgotten all about their argument and gone back to his usual hyper self, elbowing her and whining for attention. Looking at his face now, set in harder lines than she had ever seen it, was like looking at a totally different person, and she had no idea how to talk to him–

The nausea in her stomach spiked. Doubling over, she noted fuzzily that Buji was bending, too, clutching his stomach. Even more fuzzily, she noticed the sound of crying coming through the propped-open landing window.

"What _is_ it?" gritted out Buji.

"Youma." Rini stumbled toward the window. She couldn't believe she hadn't recognized the sensation before. Yes, it was different, stronger and more painful than usual – suddenly she thought of the human youma she had heard Serena and Darien talking about. Was it one of them there now? Was that why the auras felt different?

She pushed up on her toes, ignoring the dulling ache in her stomach, to look out of the window. Buji pressed in beside her at the sill, his hand still at his belly.

The window looked out over the playground. It was the kindergarteners' turn for recess. Rini could see two of the girls that she had sat at a table with before she was moved up into second grade. Hikari was holding tightly onto the seesaw, crying. An ink-black tentacle was wrapped around her leg. Yuuko was screaming and clawing at the playground mulch as another black tentacle dragged her backward.

Her fingernails dug into the window sill. "We have to call Serena."

"With what?" Buji's arm was trembling against hers. "We don't have phones."

Rini looked up at him. She had thought he was scared when she felt him tremble. But she saw now that he looked excited. Tense, but excited. His eyes were shining, and his fists were clenched the same way Serena's sometimes were right before she was about to transform.

Sure enough, Buji's aura swirled up around them, crashing like a wave. Then he was wearing the blue and gold outfit he wore when they were training in Elysion. The glamour on his head dissipated, revealing the golden horns poking out from beneath his dark hair. The golden talons at the tips of his spiny white wings clicked against the floor.

He jumped up onto the window sill. "Stay here!" he ordered, shoving the window open and leaping out into the air.

His jump was miscalculated, though. Buji could feel it as soon as his feet left the windowsill, the too-hard jerk of his wings straining against his back and shoulder muscles. He skidded into the mulch, his feet sending up a spray of mulch chips, and caught himself on his hands and knees. Bits of mulch got stuck inside the leather guards covering his palms. He winced but stood up without bothering to fish them out, and took off running toward the jungle gym, where he could see the youma.

It looked like a giant tangle of black spaghetti with a head. Half of its tentacles were wrapped around the jungle gym bars to hold on and the other half were stretched out in all directions across the playground to seize the kindergartners. It didn't have a face; it was like some modified, many-legged version of the faceless black youma. All it had was a mouth, stretched wide, with the kindergartners' and teachers' blue energy pouring into it.

Buji's blood pumped loudly in his ears as he pulled the bow and arrows that Mikai had given him out of his Subspace pocket. He didn't feel scared, the way Asanuma had told him he would the first time he had to fight a youma. He felt ready. He could see himself dusting the youma, shooting it right through an eye like Ishida shooting a Hollow in Bleach. Darien would be shell-shocked, and Serena would cluck proudly over him, and Rini would –

A crackling hand slammed into him before he even saw it.

One minute he was pulling back his arm to nock the arrow, and the next he was pinned against the swing set's metal strut. His legs dangled, his wings screaming with pain from the way they were crunched between him and the metal. He felt himself gagging like when he went to the dentist and had to have big plastic pieces put in his mouth for the X-ray.

"What do we have here?" said a lady's voice. Through his watering eyes, Buji managed to see that she had bright green hair – and that she was much farther away from him than she should have been, considering her hand was pinning his neck. "Another little roach?"

He could smell smoke and feel pain. Her hand was beginning to burn through the high collar of his tunic. He gagged.

A brown blur slammed into the lady.

Buji slumped into the mulch. The breath was knocked out of him along with everything else but the sound of his thudding heartbeat. He sat there for a full minute, unable to breathe, before his lungs convulsed and sucked in a choking breath.

Along with the air, everything else rushed in, too: he felt the searing pain at his throat and the joints of his wings, tasted the blood in his mouth, and heard shrieking and snarling.

Buji shoved himself up with his hands and saw a panther-sized brown cat on top of the green-haired lady. The lady's gloved hands were shoved against the front of its haunches. Smoke curled up from its fur, which was shifting into scales and feathers.

"Rini!" Buji scrabbled to his feet.

He could feel Rini beginning to lose control. Her body was melting and changing uncontrollably the way Helios had warned him it could. She could lose control and lose herself and not be Rini anymore but he couldn't do anything, not while that Black Moon lady was holding onto her –

Buji's own body began to shift. His skin ruffled up and hardened into scales, hard and itchy, and his nose stretched into a hot, wide-nostriled snout, stretching, stretching, a terrible heat building inside him, and he sucked in a mouthful of air to quench it –

Sailor Moon and Asanuma got to the school playground just in time to see a huge jet of water shoot from Buji's dragon mouth.

Its force sent the Black Moon woman slamming into one of the swing set struts. The swing set groaned, creaking up, up, up – and toppled over, crashing to the ground in a racket of chains and metal.

"Oh my God." Asanuma stared at the spot where the Black Moon woman's black boot poked from beneath the rubble.

Moon paid it no attention. She was rushing instead to Rini's twitching, half-furred form where she was slumping into the mulch. Buji, his face slowly returning to smooth, unscaled normal, tottered toward them, his wings dragging in the mulch behind him. He collapsed in Moon's lap next to Rini.

"Darien," Asanuma shouted, turning toward the school gate where he could sense Tuxedo Mask and Sailor Jupiter approaching. "DARIEN!"

"Idiot!" panted Jupiter as she ran up to them, hot on Mask's heels. "Do you WANT everyone to find out who we are?"

"We seem to be having that problem a lot lately," said Moon, looking up from the two not-quite-human children slumped in her lap and giving a meaningful glance to Mask.

He smirked back at her, but his expression was distracted. "What just happened?"

Asanuma walked over to the rubble of the swing set, trailing one booted foot through the pond-sized puddle of water surrounding it. "I think we just found our fourth Shittenou, is what happened."

Mask and Jupiter looked at Moon She nodded in confirmation.

"Geeze," Jupiter groaned, sinking into a crouch next to Moon. "He's a Shittenou AND a priest? Next you're going to tell me Helios doubles as a Senshi."

Mask could not contain a choked sound of laughter at this. Moon shook with repressed laughter, too, and the movement jarred the two children in her lap, waking them up.

"What happened?" Buji asked groggily.

"You just wiped out that Black Moon lady and drove her youma off, kiddo," said Asanuma. His tone was light, but he caught Mask's eyes and nodded toward the swing set rubble. The black boot was gone. The Black Moon woman had teleported away. "Oh, and you're a Shittenou."

Buji bolted up, narrowly missing Moon's chin with one of his horns. "I'm a _Shittenou_? My fire _worked_?"

"Sorry, no fire," said Asanuma, tapping his foot in the puddle again. "Water. See?"

"Aw, WATER," said Buji plaintively. "I wanted to set her on FIRE. Water's lame. It doesn't do anything."

"Yeah, except knock over a two-ton swing set," said Asanuma. "Geeze, kid."

Buji's eyes went to Moon. "We did good, nee-chan?" He grinned looped his arm over Rini's shoulder like they were posing for a picture. Rini blinked tiredly at him with slit-pupilled cat's eyes, not seeming to register it.

"Very good," said Moon. "But you should have waited for us to get there."

"I told him," Rini mumbled, head drooping against Moon's shoulder. Her hair hid her face.

Moon looked over at Mask. "Do you have anything to tell them, Tuxedo Mask?"

"I think I'll let Helios do the lecturing," said Mask grimly.

Buji blanched. His arm fell from Rini's shoulders. "Come on, Darien!"

"Wow," said Jupiter in a low voice to Asanuma. "Helios must really be something else if he can scare Buji more than Darien does."

"He makes him meditate," muttered back Asanuma, who had heard all of Buji's complaints about the priest. "A LOT."

Jupiter clapped Buji on the shoulder. "Well, I say good job. It's just as well you and Asanuma decided to screw Darien and train anyways."

"Lita!" Asanuma wore a scandalized expression. "We already had this conversation. Darien is NOT a pedophile. There was no screwing involved."

Mask's eyes narrowed as Jupiter snickered a little and Moon hide her smile and shook her head reproachfully.

"Back to class," Mask said darkly. "Buji, tonight, sleep, and don't go to Elysion. Helios can chew you out tomorrow." He looked around as though daring the rest of them to say anything.

"Yes, _Mom_," said Asanuma. "I'll take you home today, Buji. Unless DARIEN wants to."

Mask just Looked at him.

"I think what he means is, 'Screw you, Asanuma,' " translated Jupiter with another snicker.

"We can't go back to class _yet_," said Buji loudly. "You have to hide my horns, Darien." Then, as Asanuma burst into more snickers, "And look at Rini!"

They all did. Moon had lifted her to sit at the end of one of the playground slides so she could fuss over her. She was sitting up now and not looking so pale, but she still had a few short whiskers quivering gracefully on either side of her nose, and her eyes were still cat-like. Most tellingly of all, small silken brown cat ears peeked out from just in front of her hair buns. They twitched as Serena touched them gently, and a purr-like sound came from her mouth. Rini turned immediately pink and wide-eyed, scooting backward on the slide.

Moon smiled softly. Buji guffawed until Mask and Asanuma both shot him death glares.

Mask then turned his gaze back to Rini, and if either Moon or Rini had been watching him instead of each other, they would have noticed how tenderly his eyes rested on them.

"I guess we're just going to have to use the Luna Pen until we have time to figure out how to bring you back to normal," Moon said, cupping Rini's cheek instead. "Okay?"

Rini cleared her throat. Her whiskers quivered. "Fine."

"Ha ha, now you're like me!" crowed Buji gleefully as Moon used the Luna Pen to conceal Rini's cat-like appearance and Mask replaced Buji's glamour to hide his horns.

"I'm _not_," said Rini, but her defiant words were accompanied by a stiffness around her mouth as though she was trying not to break into a smile. Sailor Moon tilted her head, confused, until she remembered that Buji had been mad at Rini. Now he was acting normally again, and it seemed like Rini was thrilled, in her quiet, stubborn way.

"Okay, back to class, slackers, before all these kindergarteners wake up," Asanuma chivvied them toward the school. "You, too," he directed at Darien and Serena. "Before Etoukou sends a search party out for you."

Darien went to Elysion that night even though neither Buji nor Rini were there for him to work with. Part of the reason was to go to inform Helios of the news about Buji, of course, but a larger part – a part that Darien did not acknowledge – of the reason was that Darien did not want to fall asleep. For all that Endymion seemed as dormant as he had been since Christmas, the princess had once again begun to make appearances in Darien's dreams. _Appearances_ being a relative term, since he could see nothing, only hear her voice, sobbing for him to come to her.

Her sobbing wasn't what bothered him. He had been immune to them even before he found out Serena was Sailor Moon. There were only so many times you could hear a person crying for the same thing over and over again before you ceased to find it heart-breaking and instead just wanted to tell them to suck it up.

What _did_ bother him was that his dream self didn't seem to feel so cavalierly toward the princess. Instead, he could feel himself pushing his body up, even as crippling pain squeezed his insides and heaved against the arm he had held to his abdomen to hold in what were probably his intestines, so that he could stumble toward the princess's voice. Thus far, he had managed to shove himself awake each time before he could get to her. But each night, the princess's voice got closer.

Helios's eyes rested on the smudges beneath Darien's eyes. He did not say anything about them, however. He only listened attentively to Darien's news about Buji being the last Shittenou.

"I wonder if it is only the result of the Golden Crystal's choosing," he said after Darien finished. "In the past, Shittenou were chosen by the crystal, as were the priests like myself. They were watched for by all in the kingdom, recognized by their powers and brought to the prince. It was believed that the crystal chose the youths best suited to hold a Shittenou's powers and not for any other reason because the Shittenou came from all over the planets and were almost never acquainted with the prince prior to their discovery. Yet all of your Shittenou have been people you know and trust, Darien-sama, as though you are the one that chose them based on their loyalty, rather than the crystal choosing them based on their ability."

Darien said nothing. He was bothered by the idea that, as he had suspected, his friends had been drawn into this millennium-old conflict because of their proximity to him, not because they had already been irreversibly destined for it.

"Of course, it is also possible that, like the princess's Senshi, they were always meant to be your guards and merely gravitated to you even before they found their powers?" Helios mused. "But the fact that Bujiro has surfaced as Rini-hime's Elysian priest even though he is years before her time suggests otherwise."

Darien looked up. "You mean that you don't think that he was meant to become her priest in the future?"

"When he is in his twenties and she has just been born?" Helios looked doubtful. "So far as I know, priests are always close in age to their lieges in order to facilitate camaraderie and understanding."

Darien and Helios regarded each other for a moment, as though trying to figure out how "camaraderie and understanding" fit into their relationship.

"So you being a thousand years ahead of me…" Darien said.

"Is what you in your current time would call a _mess-up_," Helios finished with a small smile. Spending so much time with Buji had taught him a great deal of modern slang. "But allow me to add, Darien-sama, that I only ever feel older than you when you are having a tantrum."

Darien's face darkened. "I don't have tantrums."

"Returning to the question of Bujiro and Rini-hime," said Helios, wisely circumventing this potential pothole in the conversation, "it may be that the abnormality of our own priest-and-prince relationship has caused the strangeness of theirs. Chaos breeds chaos, after all."

Darien tried to ignore this word. "Then what happens when she goes to the future? When they're not the same age?"

Helios wore his thoughtful frown. "One cannot know," he said slowly. "But it almost seems to imply…"

He trailed off, and no amount of hinted threats from Darien could get him to finish the sentence. Spending so much time with Buji had also, apparently, taught the Elysian priest how to be stubborn.

At bedtime that night, once Serena had given up trying to finish (or begin, really) the make-up work for the classes that she would be missing for the track meet this week, she flopped onto her bed and patted the matress beside her. "Rini, c'mere."

Rini, lying on her stomach on the floor with a book propped open against her pillow, looked up. "Why?"

Serena scooted across the mattress to reach down and tap Rini's nose. The Luna Pen glamour faded, leaving behind Rini's lingering cat-like features. "I wanted to try to get rid of those whiskers of yours." She grinned and shrugged. "Of course, if you want to keep them…"

Rini scrambled up onto the bed.

Serena laughed and stretched to put the book on Rini's pillow face-down so that she wouldn't lose her page. Then she rolled back onto her side. "Okay, lie down here."

Rini, looking slightly suspicious, lowered herself onto her side, facing Serena. Serena smiled at her reassuringly and reached to take her hand, clasping their fingers together.

Just as Serena closed her eyes to concentrate, Rini blurted out, "Buji doesn't seem mad anymore."

Serena opened her eyes. "I saw that. Are you glad?"

Rini squirmed. Not answering the question, she said, "I didn't say sorry. I think he just forgot he was mad."

Serena closed her eyes again, smiling. "That's okay. It's good that you two can't remember to stay mad at each other. I remember when me and –" She stopped. "Never mind. You just go to sleep, and hopefully this'll work and tomorrow you won't look like a Shugo Chara cosplayer anymore."

Rini made a displeased noise but snuggled down into Serena's pillows.

Serena matched her breathing to Rini's, trying to feel the same innate closeness she could with Darien when she was touching the rope. Hopefully she would be able to help Rini turn back completely human the way she had helped Darien. Serena sank into herself to look for the same faint awareness that had let her find Rini's aura months ago, on that first, stormy night when she appeared and then ran away.

But she must have fallen asleep in the middle of finding it, for Serena did not remember what happened after that, which was this:

A tendril of aura that was her own but streaked with hazy silver crept into Rini's and encountered, within Rini's softly glowing white aura, thin lines of silver threaded through it like lines of darker rock in white marble. As the two silvers met, it grew and billowed, racing up Serena's aura like a flame burning down a fuse. And if anyone had been there to see Serena's eyes at that moment, they would have seen, for several brief seconds, silver-flecked violet irises peeking out from between her eyelids.

A few miles away, Prince Diamond's head shot up.

Sapphire stiffened at the sudden excitement he sensed racing through his brother's mind. "Diamond?"

"There you are," breathed Diamond. His eyes, all three of them, glowed with an almost frightening light. "_Serenity_."

Sapphire looked around uneasily. They were in the bridge of the ship, overseeing the crystal repairs that Emerald's newly-procured – and hard-won, if her bloody state was anything to go by – energy had allowed them to begin. There was no Moon Princess in sight.

"She's here, Sapphire." Diamond turned his glowing eyes to Sapphire now, seizing his arm. "Here in _this _city, all this time!" His grip became painfully tight; then he flung Sapphire's arm away and whirled around, his cape flaring. "All this time!"

Anger was bleeding into his voice. Sapphire recognized it and wisely stayed silent rather than speaking, lest it be directed at him.

"All this time!" Diamond repeated again. Then he spun back to Sapphire. "Where is Emerald? Has she had contact with all of the Senshi? Has she recorded footage?" He slammed a hand into an inertial compensator console. "Confound it, if only Bertie were here!"

A note of regret rang in his mind, barely audible beneath his building frustration as Sapphire sensed Diamond mentally acknowledge for the first time that he should not have let the Wiseman kill Rubeus and the Sisters. Sapphire said nothing; he knew Diamond would sooner let Emerald kiss him than admit aloud that he had been wrong.

Diamond let out another frustrated sound and swept through the clutter of objects at Emerald's station at the bridge: viewing crystals and recording slides and data pads. They made tinkling sounds as they were scattered across the station surface, some clattering to the floor, and in all the racket, Sapphire would have missed the Wiseman's sudden appearance had he not been able to sense him.

He turned, regarding the being with hard eyes.

The Wiseman ignored him. "What do you seek, my prince?"

Diamond's nostrils were flared. "The princess, Wiseman! She has been here all this time, among the Senshi, and you did not tell me – "

"You and I were both informed that the Senshi had no knowledge of who the Moon Princess is in this time," said the Wiseman calmly. "I only just sensed her presence now myself. She seems to have been shielding her aura and momentarily lost control. It is unlikely that we will be able to locate her again."

Diamond had been pacing in his impatience, and now his boot came down upon one of the recording crystals that had clattered to the floor.

A flash of triumph from the Wiseman's mind was enough to send Sapphire diving for it. "Diamond, wait!"

Diamond stopped, shifting his weight backward as he eyed Sapphire with some distrust. Sapphire knelt, lifting the crystal from the floor and handing it to Diamond.

"There may be something of use on this," he said quietly, flicking a meaningful glance toward the Wiseman. The Chaos minion's mind was so well-shielded that Sapphire was rarely able to read impressions from it, and any emotion strong enough to escape that shield was worth investigating.

Diamond was turning the crystal over in his hand. "This is mine," he said. "Rubeus wished for me to watch it." The flatness of his voice, and again that regretful twinge in his thoughts, was enough to let Sapphire know that he hadn't fulfilled Rubeus's wish.

Sapphire handed him one of the viewing ports from Emerald's station, keeping a careful eye on the Wiseman.

His brother inserted the crystal into the appropriate jack. They both had a careful eye on the Wiseman, and their joined suspicion was enough to make Sapphire warm, for just a moment. This was how it should be, he and his brother united, a common front.

The the hologram sprang up from the crystal. The common front crumbled as Diamond's eyes lit up, silver and manic, sucked back into his obsession. He was not even paying attention to the Wiseman anymore.

The hologram was of one of their youma attacking a group of people in one of the city's parks. The whole image was overlaid with Bertie's neat, glowing white schematics, angle calculations and attack intensities and vital readings. They were clumped the most densely around a figure darting and dodging around the youma, a figure in a blue and red Senshi fuku and holding a shield, a figure on whom Diamond's eyes were focused so intently that she could only be one person.

"There she is." Laughter clung to the edges of the prince's voice, excited, hysterical laughter. "There she is! Posing as one of her own Senshi!"

He fell silent, though his eyes still gleamed, watching the hologram as the Senshi twisted and leapt.

"Diamond…" Sapphire ventured, hardly daring to tear his eyes from the Wiseman. The Chaos minion was still; he looked completely calm. But through his mind shield, Sapphire could sense emotions seething.

"Send Emerald to me," Diamond ordered. His eyes did not leave the hologram. "Tell her I will require more youma."

**A/N**: I had to cut my favorite scene from this chapter. But it will be in next chapter, which will definitely be out within a month, possibly less. Please leave feedback: your likes, dislikes, confusions, expectations for the rest of the season?


	31. Chapter 31

**Long A/N**: So there were mixed reactions to the Buji=Shittenou thing, mainly for shipping reasons, if I'm interpreting reviews correctly. I want to assure you guys that Venus won't be left out in the cold. I also ask you to take note of how different the current Shittenou are from Nephrite, Malachite, etc., for I have tried to write the current Shittenou so that none of them closely resemble any of the original generals in appearance or personality. One of my intentions in writing STC was to decry the concept of Serena and Darien falling in love just because their past incarnations loved each other. By making the current Shittenou only new, not-dead versions of their past selves and pairing them with the Senshi, I would actually fall into line with that concept and _contradict _the idea that people and feelings are "subject to change." But that line of thought will be more fully explored in Season 3, so, for now, I digress.

**Snorlax-sized thanks** to Sue, merangelgal, Dawn of Aurora, Railway Station, Elen-di, ally0212, Hurs Kane, Logan Bear, Katrina, Rakusa, Laura, Starling Sinclair, ooSuperBatGirloo, Fedski; Midnight-Nemesis, whose reviews never fail to comfort and enlighten me; and Daydreamishly, whose mind-reading abilities never fail to frighten me. Thanks for the help! To Miss Katiebear: originally, I actually _was_ going to use Seiko as a Shittenou, but Mikai elbowed him out of the way. Ha ha.

Thank you to the thirty-first power to **Jade**. What was that foolishness we were thinking about summer being easier than the school year?

This chapter has a **Gore and Language Warning**. Also, there was an **error **last chapter when Coach Etoukou said the track team would be heading out for their first official meet "_tomorrow_." It should have said "_next weekend_."

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Sailor Moon or anything else.

Chapter 30 Timeline:

202. While Haruka stuck close to Serena during track practices, Michiru followed Asanuma as part of their plan to find Rei and Saturn. She began to feel increasingly jealous of Haruka's affection for Serena.

203. While Michiru followed Asanuma, he fought a silver human-youma that Haruka said had been made by Tomoe using Serena's blood.

204. Mikai, finally yielding to the fact that they wouldn't find Ami anytime soon, decided to tell Darien what he knew. He told Darien that Mercury sent Rei to get Sailor Saturn's reincarnation so that Pluto wouldn't get her. Pluto wants to get to Saturn because Saturn is the only one who can prevent the princess's soul from going to hell if she dies. Once Pluto got her hands on Saturn, she would set the princess's flash-form free – and, by extension, everyone else's as well. Mikai told Darien that Pluto is also the one who put memory blocks on all of the reincarnations, which means he may already have met the princess but just not recognized her.

204. When Darien told the others what Mikai had told him, Serena and Lita discussed why, if Miss Lanai was Sailor Pluto and working with Mercury and Mars, she hadn't told Serena about them. Serena believed that it was because Lanai had seen how Serena has disobeyed her orders to stay away from Darien. Lita disagreed. But they agree to continue keeping Lanai's identity a secret from the others.

205. Lita broke up with Motoki. When Darien asked Serena why, she said that it was better and easier to break it off if they weren't meant to be. Darien argued that being "meant to be" is no guarantee of love. He and Serena, he said, knew that better than anyone.

206. Saori, irate that two amateurs like Serena and Darien have stolen most of the track meet events from her and Kobayashi, went to Principal Knight to complain. Knight ignored her in favor of Serena and Darien, earning Serena's disapproval.

207. In class, Buji was still mad at Rini and giving her the silent treatment for ignoring Asanuma. While he and Rini were in the hallway, they sensed a youma attacking on the school playground.

208. Buji went to fight, but Emerald showed up and pinned him. Rini transformed into a giant cat to get Emerald off him, but she could not control her transformation. Buji turned into his dragon-form to save her.

209. Instead of breathing fire, however, he breathed water, revealing that he was not just Rini's Elysian priest but the fourth Shittenou.

210. By that night, not all of Rini's cat transformation had faded. Serena reached out to her the same way she did to Darien to help him transform back into a human. The threads of the Moon Princess's aura in hers met the ones in Rini's aura and allowed the princess's flash-form to emerge for a few moments.

211. Prince Diamond, on the Black Moon ship, sensed the princess's aura and summoned Emerald for more youma so that they can flush out the princess.

**Subject to Change**

Season 2

Chapter Thirty-One: An Ugly Sort of Desire

Emerald angrily knotted the black scarf around her head. She looked like one of those disgusting gypsies now, the headscarf clashing horribly with her classy black dress. But Sapphire had called her to Prince Diamond's presence, and she would not let him see her with the ugly gash in her scalp that that stupid cockroach of a child had left her with earlier in the day. Given a little more time, she would be able to heal it completely and regrow the hair that had been torn out by that swing set metal gouging through her hair – she refused to think of how lucky she was that the wound had not been a centimeter deeper – if she had another day or so. But Prince Diamond had summoned her now, straight out of her bed, and one did not keep Prince Diamond waiting.

Even if one _was_ his future queen. She smirked at her reflection in the mirror, smoothing one of her eyebrows with a gloved fingertip, and turned to go to the mother ship's bridge.

She had hoped for a more intimate meeting, just herself and Diamond, but when she got there, several droids, along with Sapphire and the Wiseman were also there, the former standing close to his brother's chair in the middle of the bridge and watching the latter, who hovered on Diamond's other side, with narrowed eyes.

As for the prince himself, he sat in his throne-like chair, leaning forward to watch a holo-vid being projected from a viewing crystal cupped in his hands. Emerald clicked forward, clearing her throat and curtsying how, peering at the prince from beneath her eyelashes. His gaze did not waver from the projection, and Emerald transferred her gaze from his gleaming eyes to the projection itself.

Her insides jolted with recognition. The image was a recording of one of the Senshi from this present. The blue and red one, Sailor Moon. She was powerful, yes, but that didn't explain why Diamond was staring at her with such intensity –

Emerald's insides gave another jolt of recognition, this one much more powerful. She knew that look. How many times had she seen it on Nemesis, when she lingered in the shadows of the throne room long after everyone was gone and seen Diamond pull a viewing crystal from his pocket, activate it, and stare at the image of the silver-haired, white-dressed woman it projected?

He only wore that expression when he was looking at the Moon Princess.

"Emerald." It was Sapphire's voice, and she struggled to collect herself. That blonde Senshi brat was the _princess_? That bitch was the –

_"Emerald, I believe Prince Diamond has an order for you."_ This was the Wiseman's voice, and it cut through her mental chaos. She wrenched her eyes away from the projection of the twirling Senshi and forced them to Diamond.

"My prince," she managed through numb lips. "You have found the princess?"

At her last word, Diamond's eyes flicked for a moment from the projection to her. "Yes," he murmured distractedly. "Emerald – more youma. To flush her out."

His eyes returned to the hologram, and Emerald flushed. She felt Sapphire's eyes on her, disdainful, always, always looking down on her. She sprang to her feet, chin out. She would show him. She would be queen, and she would _show him_. Show everyone.

With an "of course, my prince," she stepped into a void and out of the bridge.

The laboratory was silent and white, as always. "TOMOE!" Emerald shouted, striding down the hallway, past the windows and windows of experiments. She found him at the end of the hall, in the alcove of a room that seemed to double as an office. He was staring at a phone in his hand, his lips turned down the slightest degree in what would have been a blank look on anyone else but was a frown on him. She could hear the busy tone from the earpiece and felt annoyed that he had ignored her for someone who clearly was not picking up.

"Youma," she snapped, clicking to a halt on the linoleum. "I need more."

He glanced at her. He lowered the phone back to its cradle. "Of course you do," he said with a faint arch of a white brow. "Well, we have spares now. You may take three."

"I need more than – " Emerald broke off, thinking. All the better if she could not have more. The fewer the youma there were, the less attacks she could mount, and the less likely that Sailor Moon – _Serenity_, her mind sneered – would show up. So long as she could…

She traced her thigh, thinking. Yes. Yes, that might work.

"Fine," she said absently to Tomoe. "I'll take three. Chiral! Achiral!"

The two droids appeared. "Yes, Mistress."

"I need you to take three of these creatures into custody," she said. She turned, clicking back down the hallway and glancing through the windows. "This one…this one…and that one."

Tomoe had followed her. He stood at her shoulder now, calmly taking in the two static-shackled human youma and one wolf-like one that she had selected. "Not that one," he said, nodding at the wolf one.

Emerald tilted her head to give him a Look. "Oh?" she said dangerously.

"No," he said. "It will do little other than be distracted by smells and run away. It was one of the earlier experiments with Darien Shields's blood. Why not take that one? It was very successful when you sent it out. It managed to completely debilitate the boy, didn't it?"

He was looking at the glowing silver female that she had sent out to gather energy several days ago. It had been successful, very successful, completely paralyzing the blond Shittenou when the Shittenou made physical contact with it. Furthermore, it was mute, seemed unable to move itself except for its eyes, which dreamily watched everything around it, and, as a result, was one of the easiest of Tomoe's monstrous experiments to deal with.

The problem was that it had been made with Tsukino Serena's blood. Tsukino Serena, the girl who was a student at the academy where Tomoe's wife was principal. Tsukino Serena, the girl who was Sailor Moon – and now, Emerald knew, the Moon Princess. Now that Diamond was looking for Sailor Moon, he would notice that this youma exuded the same sort of silver power that Moon did, and he would demand of Emerald to know how and where she had obtained it. Then he would find out Sailor Moon's civilian disguise and easily find her…and then she, Emerald, would never be queen.

Emerald's hands clenched. Even if she did not use this silver youma now, if Diamond saw the battle when she _had_ used it and recognized the youma's power, her plants would be ruined. Emerald did not record battles, the way Bertie clearly had, but if Diamond went to the Wiseman and used his crystal ball…

But the Wiseman was her ally in this. He had been nothing but supportive of her pursuit of Diamond, had even given her these Death Hands to help her win Diamond's approval and heart. If she went to him and asked him not to show Diamond that battle if he asked, he would help her.

These things all settled in her mind, Emerald returned her attention to Tomoe. "I will not require that youma." She pointed at a spider-like one with several arms emerging gorily from its midsection. "Give me that one."

Tomoe raised an eyebrow above his mechanical eye but said nothing. He watched Chiral and Achiral enter the containment cells of the human youma Emerald had chosen and herd them into voids. In the cell behind him, the white cat was watching as well, his eyes weary.

"However." Emerald tossed her hair over her shoulder. "I do have a different task for you. Or, rather, for your wife."

Tomoe turned toward her. His brow was still aloft, his eye gleaming with interest. "One which I may be willing to relay if I receive a favor in return."

Emerald glowered. "What?"

Tomoe continued as if he hadn't noticed her displeasure. "I will require Chiral or Achiral's services for a day or two."

Emerald's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"For a…delicate matter of…personal interest." Tomoe smiled coldly. "It may result in more Senshi blood for you."

Emerald's green brows rose. "Then by all means. I will send one to you when I am done. Now, let us speak to your wife."

She led the way down the hall, thinking. She would make sure that the Moon Princess was not smoked out by these youma attacks. And then she would find a way to kill the girl here, before Diamond could ever even see her in the future.

And then…Diamond would be hers.

The intercom system at Infinity Academy was so sophisticated that it did not crackle when an announcement was about to be made. Instead, it chimed delicately.

Serena, slumped in her chair in literature class over the rhetorical analysis she was _supposed_ to be writing but was somehow too sleepy to focus on, flinched fully awake when the soft chime filled the classroom. Her pencil rolled off her desk. The literature teacher, Morita-sensei, sent her a reproving glance as the rest of the class looked up, pleased that an announcement was interrupting their timed writing assignment.

"Teachers," said Mrs. Knight's cool voice. "Please release all members of the high school track team to the gym immediately. That is all."

Her classmates' heads swung toward Serena. She blinked and looked at their teacher. He smiled and came over to take her writing assignment. "Go ahead," he said. "Just make sure to come arrange with me to make up this assignment."

"Yes, sir." Serena bowed and grabbed up her things, slipping out of the door. It was not unusual for students to be called out of class at Infinity; someone always had some concert rehearsal or movie audition to leave early for. But it was the first time she had been called out of class, and she wondered why. Had something gone wrong with their forms for the regional track meet? The team was supposed to leave by bus tomorrow, on Friday, after school was out, so she supposed that if something had gone wrong with the forms, Coach wanted them fixed as soon as possible, but he could just have told them during class or practice this afternoon.

As she approached the stairs to the gym, she encountered Saori and Kobayashi. Kobayashi had his arm slung over the dark-haired girl's shoulders as they walked, and she was laughing quietly at something he was saying. It wasn't the first time Serena had seen them looking so close, but it _was_ the first time that she had heard Saori laugh. It was a low, throaty laugh, kind of like Lita's, and Serena felt, once again, that Saori would be a very nice person to be friends with if she could just get past her prickly exterior.

But the dark-haired girl saw her and pulled away from Kobayashi, her laugh becoming an impassive look. The two seniors headed down the stairs, and Serena followed a few steps behind.

Not just Coach and the other track team members but also Principal Knight herself were waiting in the gym when Kobayashi, Saori, and Serena filed in.

"News, kids!" bellowed Coach, clapping his hands together. He seemed about to add something else, but Mrs. Knight stepped past him.

"I'm afraid I have some news," she said. "Would you all sit down?"

Serena flashed a greeting smile at Haruka, who was grinning at her from the lowest bleacher bench, his school tie already loosened although it was only the second period of the day. Then she slid onto the bleacher seat next to Darien, whose tie was knotted as neatly as ever, though his eyes were lined with tiredness. He had probably been up late worrying about Buji. He had been angry enough when the little boy turned out to be Rini's Elysian priest, so he had to be even more concerned about Buji's safety now that it turned out he was a Shittenou as well. Serena was still surprised by it herself. She had had her own private theory that Haruka was Darien's fourth Shittenou. And although neither of them had mentioned it, she knew that Darien had thought – or feared, rather – that Mayuko's baby was going to be the fourth Shittenou.

"Bad news?" asked Kobayashi from where he and Saori had sat beside Sei Le.

"Well, you will probably view it as good news, Mr. Kobayashi," said Principal Knight dryly. "Since it involves the six of you missing an extra day of school."

Kobayashi gave a whoop. "Seriously? What, are we leaving early?"

"Yes," said Principal Knight. "Apparently there has been a mix-up with the bus that was ordered for you all. The bus company can still provide a bus, but only today, not tomorrow."

Kobayashi gave another whoop, but Darien frowned. "Why not just book another bus company? Or let us drive ourselves?"

"I did attempt to book another company, Mr. Shields, but every company in Myugen, Minato, and Juuban is booked solid. As you may have heard, there is a high school baseball tournament occurring this week in addition to your track meet. And it is against the educational board's regulations to allow students to drive private vehicles to official school functions such as this one." Mrs. Knight looked away from him to eye the rest of them. "We have called each of your parents or guardians to inform them of the change. If you need a ride home to get your things, inform me, and we shall arrange transportation. If not, then head home now, get your things, and meet Coach Etoukou back here by one o'clock to catch the bus."

"Sweeeeet!" whistled Kobayashi, leaping down off the bleachers. "C'mon, Sao-chan, let's book it!"

Haruka climbed to his feet, hooking his thumbs in his belt loops as he turned to look over his shoulder. "You need a ride, Serena?"

"Thanks, but I have one," said Serena. "Oh, I mean – " She looked at Darien, realizing it was rather rude to assume Darien would give her a ride. "Can I ride with you? Is that okay?"

"_Yes_," said Darien, looking as though it was ruder of her to ask him than it was for her to assume. "You didn't have to ask."

"I was just being _polite,_" she argued as he directed her out of the gym with a hand to the small of her back.

"Oh, polite? I wish you'd remembered the meaning of that word when you were throwing up on me."

"I wasn't throwing up ON you. I threw the hat with it AT you. And that was YOUR fault anyway, I told you to stop being such a stalker…"

Their voices faded out of earshot.

"Oh!" Coach, standing next to Mrs. Knight, let out a sniffle and dabbed at his eyes with the end of his polka-dotted tie. "Don't they just make your insides melt?"

"I'm so sorry we can't come watch you, dear!" For the third time since she had arrived home with Sammy and Rini in tow, Ikuko squeezed Serena close against her ruffled apron.

"Yeah," snickered Sammy. "I'd pay good money to see you trip and fall on your face in front of hundreds of people."

Ikuko and Serena cuffed him upside the head at the same time.

"Hey!" he protested loudly.

"You should be grateful!" declared Serena. "I got you out of a whole half a day at school because Mom picked you up to come tell me good luck!"

Sammy grumbled something but gave her a grudging hug – and jumped away with a yelp as Serena tried to give him a noogie.

Serena grinned, then stuffed her hands into the front of her Infinity track hoodie as she bent down to grin at Rini. "Be good while I'm gone, okay, Rini?" Ikuko had checked her out for the same reason as Sammy. Serena was grateful, since they wouldn't get back from the meet until Sunday, and she wouldn't have liked to go three days straight without seeing Rini if she hadn't even had a chance to say goodbye.

"Is that supposed to be a joke?" Rini eyed her, clearly insulted by the insinuation that she needed to be treated like a normal six-year-old and told to be good. "It's not funny."

Serena laughed and ruffled her hair. Rini softened a little and looked around to make sure no one was looking before she leaned into Serena's touch.

Darien hadn't been looking from where he was putting Serena's bag in his car's backseat, but he _sensed_ Rini do it. He also sensed the warm little sigh of happiness she let out and the way that Serena squeezed her close for a second before letting go. He sighed himself, throwing Ikuko a wave as he slid into the driver's seat.

"No raiding my PG-13 manga!" Serena warned before ducking into the car and shutting the door. She rolled down the window and waved wildly at them all as Darien accelerated away.

Then she sighed, pushing the button to roll the window back up.

Darien glanced over. "What is it?"

Serena sighed again. "What if something happens while we're gone?"

"Lita'll be over as soon as classes end today. She promised to stick around all weekend, and Asanuma'll probably be over with Buji half the time. Plus, I gave Helios a cell phone in case he needs to reach us."

Darien was reassuring himself as much as he was Serena. He himself would have much preferred to have Rini in Elysion to leaving her with Serena's family. But, as lax as Serena's parents were about letting Rini tag along with the teenagers when Serena was around, he didn't think they would see any reason for the little girl to stay over at Lita's when Serena was out of town.

_He_ wouldn't, if he was one of Rini's parents.

Which he was. But that was beside the point.

Serena didn't say anything. She was still looking out her window, biting her lip.

Darien reached over and patted her hand where it sat beside her on the passenger seat. Although his eyes were on the road, he felt her smile a little and turn her hand over beneath his, squeezing it.

The dismissal bell had barely rung at the end of the day when Asanuma's cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He glanced at Lita, whose last class of the day was in the same hallway as his, and flipped it open. "Yeah?"

"Youma attack," Mikai's voice informed him.

Asanuma motioned to Lita. Ten minutes later they were at a shopping center ducking youma grenades that looked like stuffed pink Valentine's Day bunnies.

"It figures," Jupiter grumbled. "The youma decide to wait until _after_ Serena and Shields are out of town to attack."

"They were hoping to get a glimpse of my gorgeous self." Asanuma ducked another stream of the bunny grenades, throwing up a fire shield to protect himself from the shrapnel that flew into the air as they detonated a few meters behind him. "They knew they wouldn't get a chance to see me as long as Tuxedo Mask was arou – oh, damn. Jupe!"

"I told you not to call me that," Jupiter growled, flinging one last charge of lightning into the fuzzy, rabbit-eared youma. It exploded into fiery pink chunks. She spun to Asanuma. "What?"

He pointed. "There."

Jupiter followed his finger. When they had arrived at the shopping center, she had sailed in with electricity already blazing at her fingertips. Her green-white lightning filling the frill-crammed shop, she hadn't noticed that another greenish light was flickering in the shop adjacent.

Immediately her thoughts went to the human youma Serena had encountered at the grocery store a few days ago. A woman, its body had been crackling with lightning that roasted its own body.

Asanuma was already picking his way through the litter of unconscious bodies on the floor, heading toward where the light was flickering behind several aisles. Jupiter followed, her senses extended, but unlike Serena and Darien, she couldn't distinguish between the feeling of a normal youma and a human one. None of the people on the floor moved, blue energy swirled above them, draining out of them; the black youma that was sucking their energy was still somewhere in the shopping center. Logically, she and Asanuma should split up so that one of them could go after it and get these people's energy back while also stopping it from taking more people's energy. But if the source of the green light was a human youma, she didn't think either of them had the courage to decide what to do with it alone.

She was right.

The human youma they found crouching at the end of the aisle may or may not have been the one that Serena encountered. It was female, though the only way Jupiter could tell was the swell of her chest beneath the charred, once-white cloth hanging from her body. Her scalp was blackened, burned, greenish-yellow lightning crackling across it in some sickening parody of hair, and the same electricity crackled across her body, burning away the skin even as the skin grew back and was burned away again. These things, Serena had described, but what she had not described was the tortured woman's face: her eyes rolled back to the whites and her mouth stretching in a silent scream, stretched too wide, so that Jupiter could barely see her mouth and the center of her lips had cracked and were bleeding, the corners stretching to her ears just like the mouths of the black-faced youma.

And into this mouth was flowing the blue energy from the human civilians around them.

"Shit," whispered Asanuma.

At the same time, his cell phone rang.

Jupiter edged past him, getting between him and the youma. "Is it Mikai?"

Asanuma glanced down at the screen; he had strapped the phone to the inside of his wrist so that he could see the screen even if his hands were busy. "Yeah," he said as he jabbed the speaker-phone button. "Mikai!"

"Are you guys done yet?" Mikai's voice was a breathless shout, surrounded by noises, as though he was running. "There's two more youma! I'm heading for the one near Shibuya, but there's – "

"Mikai!" Jupiter shouted. "The youma here is human! It's sucking energy! How do we stop it?"

Mikai's end of the line crackled as though he'd sucked in a breath. "A human one's sucking the energy?"

"Yeah, and it's going to keep going until these people are dead," said Asanuma quickly, dropping into a crouch to grab the hand of the unconscious man sprawled out near his feet. The nail beds of his fingers were beginning blue, indicating that oxygen wasn't reaching his extremities anymore. He scrambled to another body, then another, and saw that the same thing was happening to them. If the that thing kept sucking their energy… "How do we stop it? If we hurt it – "

"That won't do anything," Mikai interrupted. They all knew it: the only way youma stopped sucking energy and returned what they had taken was if they were dusted.

"We can't kill her," said Jupiter, looking at the woman youma. But the tone of her voice said she didn't see any other option.

"If you don't, all those other people will die," Mikai's voice said. "One half-life, Lita, or fifty whole ones?"

Jupiter was still staring at the woman. Her teeth were chattering. She opened her mouth –

"Well, this was a bust."

Asanuma and Jupiter's heads snapped up. A man with long white hair was floating above them. He grimaced down at them. "You weren't the fish I was looking for. I don't imagine Sailor Moon's on her way?"

"Let her GO!" Jupiter was already in motion, hurling hissing balls of lighting toward the man. They were so bright they left white afterimages on Asanuma's vision as they blurred upward.

The man laughed. Then he disappeared. Asanuma blinked against the white in his vision and realized that the human youma was gone as well.

" – happened? What happened?" He became aware of Mikai's voice shouting.

Asanuma lifted his wrist to his mouth to talk into the phone. He felt too numb even to notice how secret-agent-like the motion was. "Some other youma just showed up and took the woman away." He looked around them, at the unconscious people. "I've gotta let you go so I can call ambulances, Mikai. Where's that other youma?"

Mikai's voice was tight. "Near Rokumeikan. You know, the Rose Mansion – "

"Yeah. We'll be right there." Asanuma hung up. "Snap out of it, Lita, we've got more to do."

They stumbled off another airplane into yet another terminal. Well, Hotaru stumbled. Rei strode as gracefully as she always did, not seeming at all tired even thought Hotaru was pretty sure she hadn't slept at all during the thirteen-hour flight. She never did, not in all of the airplane flights and bus rides and train rides they had taken.

Hotaru had lost count of how many of them there had been, had even lost count of all the countries they had been to. Rei had several different passports for her and for Hotaru. She kept them inside what she called her subspace pocket, so Hotaru could not even look at them to find out all the places that they had been. She wondered if Rei did this deliberately so that, if Hotaru somehow go to a phone, she would not be able to contract her father and tell him where to look for her.

Hotaru also wondered why she hadn't tried yet to do exactly that. Her father must be worried about her – he _must_ be. She was all that he had left of Mama. He had to be frantic, and –

A piece of circuitry shifted in her knee, just beneath her almost-healed burn and a pile of scar tissue. Hotaru went still, her eyes flying up to Rei to see if she had noticed the tiny whining sound that the faltering gear had made.

The older girl was not looking at her; her eyes were sweeping back and forth across the people and objects in the terminal the same way they always did. But she had to have noticed. She had to know. Rei never missed anything. She knew when Hotaru was only pretending to sleep, she had known when there was going to be a car crash in front of their bus three days ago, and she had known when that inconspicuous man in Osaka had been training his newspaper-grade camera on them from ten feet away. If Rei knew all of these things, and if she had known where to come get Hotaru from Hino's house, she must know about the things under all her scars. It was the only explanation for why Hotaru had been able to get through all the metal-detectors at the airports: Rei had done something to them because she _knew_.

And it explained why Rei was always so reluctant to talk to her.

Hotaru forced her leg to extend, hearing the tiny crunch of protest from the jammed gear, and tried to keep up with Rei. Her pace was fast, as usual, barely allowing Hotaru enough time to look around. She did manage to glimpse a newspaper stand and the date on one of the newspapers: January 21. She and Rei had been darting to and fro across the globe for just a little less than a month, then. It seemed like far shorter, and yet far longer.

"Eyes peeled," Rei said abruptly. Her dark eyes were still sweeping back and forth as she pulled their one carry-on behind her across the glossy faux-marble floor. "Tell me if you see anything strange."

A women's bathroom was coming up on their left. Rei walked straight into it and strode up and down its length, nudging each stall door open with her foot to make sure they were all empty. Then she brushed past Hotaru again, lifting a sign that hung on a chain on the wall. Hotaru could not read the letters on the sign. They were in English, just like the announcements about incoming and outgoing flights that she could hear being made over the airport intercom system. Rei fastened the chain to the opposite wall so that it barred the restroom entrance, and Hotaru guessed that it was the sign used to indicate that a bathroom was closed for cleaning.

Rei returned to the other end of the bathroom, standing in front of the spotless marble counter and casting an expectant glance at Hotaru's reflection in the mirror. Hotaru hurried over.

From her subspace pocket, Rei pulled two bits of a shiny clear rock. They looked like the fragments of crushed ice cubes that came out of the ice maker on Hotaru's refrigerator at home.

She handed one to Hotaru. "Put this in your ear."

Hotaru looked at it doubtfully but obeyed, pressing it in gingerly. She gasped as the little crystal, which had felt room temperature in her hand, felt suddenly like ice against the sensitive inside of her ear. Even more uncomfortably, it felt like a tiny stream of icy water was trickling deep into her ear, all the way until she felt her jaw clench with the same brief, burning-cold pain she got when she took too big a bite of ice cream. Brain-freeze, Mama had always laughingly called it.

Reflexively, she had reached up to yank the crystal out of her ear. Rei's hot hand caught her arm, stopping her.

"Don't. It's supposed to feel like that." She too was holding her hand to her ear, grimacing. It was the most expression that Hotaru had seen on her face since the time she had woken up in the motel room where they were staying after New Year's and seen Rei-san bent over her knees in the other bed, her face cupped in her hands as she drew in shaky, wet breaths. "It's so we can understand the language here. And talk it."

Hotaru blinked, suddenly realizing that the flight announcements she could still hear being made on the airport intercom were suddenly intelligible. "Flight 243 to Cincinnati is now boarding," the voice was saying.

Hotaru's eyes widened. Not just from the shock of what incredible technology – or rather, magic, she thought, remembering the way Rei pulled objects from thin air – this was, but from the fact that Rei had never, in all their weeks of traveling through foreign countries, taken out these translation devices before, which meant…

"We're staying here?" she asked breathlessly.

Rei cast her another glance over her shoulder as she grabbed the carry-on handle again and unhooked the chain from the restroom entrance. "For now."

_Thank God_, thought Darien with a sigh as he stepped into his hotel room after five hours in a van with Saori giving them all the cold shoulder, Haruka flirting with Serena, and Coach Etoukou singing along with every Lady Gaga song that came on the radio. Darien had come within an inch of killing himself – or just the rest of the world.

He left his duffel bag in a corner, made sure his phone was still on in his pocket so he would hear if anyone back in Tokyo tried to call, and peeled the comforter off the hotel bed (he didn't need to use his psychometric senses to know that it was seething with bacteria), and tossed it to the floor before flopping down onto the mattress.

He had been afraid that he would have to share a room with Tennou or Kobayashi. But apparently, Infinity was so rich that it coughed up the money for its student athletes to have their own rooms at athletic events. Nice rooms, too. He had a little sitting area with couches and an armchair a few feet away from the bed.

As soon as they had received their room keys in the plush lobby downstairs, he'd been able to tell that Serena hadn't been so happy about this single-room arrangement. She had probably been hoping to befriend Saori through some shojo-manga-type bonding like doing each others' hair and talking to each other as they feel asleep.

Darien snickered a little, rolling over and throwing his arm over his face to rest his eyes for a few minutes. Serena was such a trip…

He fell asleep before it could occur to him what a very great similarity the shojo-manga-type bonding he had been snickering at bore to his own interactions with Serena.

Rini was already opening the Tsukinos' front door when Motoki careened through their front gate, panting hard.

"How many?" she said urgently in a low voice as he stopped before the front steps, hands on his knees.

"At least three so far," he wheezed, swiping a cold-chapped hand across his sweaty face. When Lita called him to ask him to cover Rini-guard-duty while she, Asanuma, and Mikai were fighting, he had rushed over without grabbing his mittens. Part of his inattention had been not from eagerness to get to Rini to make sure nothing happened to her but, rather, from shock that Lita trusted him to protect Rini even when he could hear Asanuma's voice in the background asking if Motoki might not be tough enough to keep Rini safe if push came to shove with the youma.

Motoki's stomach wrung again. He focused on Rini to distract himself. The fierce look on her face below her brown bangs reminded him tremendously of Darien. Except that Darien hardly ever looked fierce when he was fighting youma, he only looked grim and impassive. Fierce was an expression he saved for Serena. "Are we going to help?"

Motoki shook his head. "No way." Darien – and Serena – would kill them.

Rini sucked in a breath as though to protest, then closed it, frowning fiercely. "Then I can go to Elysion, so you can fight. Let's just go give Ikuko-mama an excuse, like your dad wants to talk to me or something."

"No!" Motoki's vehemence surprised even him. But the surprise ended there, giving way to shame. Rini's plan made perfect sense – except that Motoki didn't want to fight. He really, _really_ didn't want to fight. "One of us has to stay with you."

"Elysion is safer for me than being here with – " began Rini heatedly, then stopped herself. It took Motoki a moment to realize that she had been about to say that she would be safer in Elysion than with him, considering he wasn't much of a Shittenou, and had stopped herself out of courtesy.

He gave her what was probably a sickly smile.

Rini looked back at him – and darted under his arm.

"Wha – Rini!" he shouted, wheeling around. He took off after her, but she was small and fast, as fast as Serena on her latest days. In less than thirty seconds, she was a full block ahead of him.

"Rini!" he shouted again, not caring if anyone around them stared at him. Except that there wasn't anyone around; the residential streets were practically empty. Which was strange considering that this was about the time the middle school children got out of school. They should be filling the streets right now.

Only a few blocks later, Motoki found out why they weren't.

"Crap," he half hissed, half moaned. There was a black-faced youma in the middle of the street, next to a school bus that had plowed into a streetlight. Several middle school-aged kids lay on the sidewalk, apparently having just gotten off the bus before the youma appeared and drained their energy. Through the bus windows, Motoki could see the driver and other kids slumped forward in their seats, blue energy curling from them.

Rini had stopped on the sidewalk across the street from where the youma stood before the bus. She looked back at him, her eyes fierce and expectant. For a moment, it crossed his mind to send her to get Buji, he was a Shittenou, too. Then self-hatred swept through him. No matter how scared he was, there was a thin line between being a coward and being _evil_. Hearing his teeth chatter and tasting bile in his mouth as he gripped his Shittenou stone convulsively tight in his pocket was being a coward. Calling an eight-year-old to come risk his life because Motoki was too scared to risk his own was evil.

But that youma. Darien and Serena had said that the black-faced ones weren't human, but what if they _were_? What if Darien and Serena just couldn't sense it because these ones were too far gone in their transformation? What if that unnaturally wide white mouth turning toward him right now was stretched not for his energy but in a silent scream because that was the only way it could beg him not to kill it? He stared at it, at the gaping hole like the way Darien had described his dad's tumor, a gaping void –

"_Motoki_!"

It was Rini's voice. But Motoki didn't register that. He didn't register anything at that moment, the moment the commanding tone of her voice reached his ears and raced through every muscle of his body. Jerkily, he began to turn toward her.

"You have to –" Rini began, snappishly relieved that Motoki had finally snapped out of it and decided to listen to her.

Then his face turned fully to hers, and she saw his gold-glowing eyes.

" – kill the youma," escaped the rest of her sentence. Her knees buckled beneath her, and she sat on the ground, hard.

Motoki blurred forward, electricity as bright as any of Jupiter's attacks crackling in his fists, but Rini scarcely saw him. She was seeing her Asanuma from the future again and the way his eyes had glowed gold when she screamed at him to go away. Remembering how stiffly he had obeyed, as though his body was not his own to control.

What had she done?

"Rini?"

Her head snapped up. Motoki was standing next to a pile of ash, swaying. His eyes were back to hazel and his face was very pale. The youma was nowhere to be seen.

"Did I…?" He looked like he might throw up.

"Yes," Rini heard herself say. Her stomach flipping, she stared at him, trying to figure out if he suspected what she had done. But he looked only ill and shell-shocked.

"Can we…go to Mikai's now?"

Rini nodded. "Yeah." She came closer, taking his arm gingerly, feeling relieved when his eyes didn't begin to glow again.

She would help Motoki to Mikai's, and then she would go to Elysion. Where she couldn't hurt anyone.

The next thing Darien knew, he was blinking his eyes open, the sounds of the princess's voice fading in his mind as the sound of someone knocking insistently on his door filled the room.

He ignored the first few knocks, lying still in the now-dim room and taking in the sound of the heavy rain splashing against the window. He was fairly certain that it was just Coach Etoukou, come to lecture him about drag and wind resistance and picking up his feet, etc.

But then Darien realized that Coach would have pounded, not knocked, and he would probably be bellowing something by now, like "SHIELDS! OPEN THE DOOR THIS INSTANT OR I'LL GET TSUKINO TO COME DO IT!"

As he realized this, he also became aware of a familiar scent creeping through the crack beneath his room's door, mixing with the faintly acidic tang from the rain.

Darien rolled off the bed, crossed the room in two strides, and pulled the door open.

A wet-haired Serena, wrapped in a towel, looked up at him.

He stared.

At the other end of the hallway, someone's door clicked open.

Serena squeaked and darted under Darien's arm into the room.

It was difficult to describe Darien's state of mind at that moment. He felt simultaneously like a very rusty robot, unable to move, and like a pot into which very warm, sticky honey was slowly being poured.

"What are you doing?" came Serena's hiss. "Close the door!"

Darien closed the door.

It beeped and shut with a click that seemed deafening even above the blood pounding in his ears.

Slowly, he turned around.

Serena didn't look half as tense as him. Instead, her shoulders were slumped with relief. The fluffy white towel that had covered her head was slipping back from her wet hair, like a hood falling back.

"Whew. Thanks." She looked up at him, her features crinkling with a relieved smile…

…that was slowly, as she took in the look on his face, burned away by a blush.

He watched her swallow.

"Um," she said.

"Um," he echoed. And sat down, quite forcefully, in the armchair farthest away from the bed.

Serena began to fidget. Her fingers picked at the hem of her towel, clenching the material in a way that Darien couldn't help following with his eyes, as it revealed more of her pale, goose bump-covered legs.

He realized he was staring and quickly redirected his eyes to her face, flushing.

She was shifting from foot to foot and glancing at the couch like she wanted to sit down but wasn't sure if she should, considering her attire.

Darien motioned to her that she should. "It's okay," he said, running a hand through his sleep-flattened hair. He mustered what he hoped was a comforting smile and not a leer. "What's up?"

"Um," she said again. "Um." Then she shook herself, and, gathering her towel tight around her under her chin, she seemed to gather her words about her as well. "Funny story. I was, um, taking a shower in my room, and I had shampoo, but when it was time to condition, I realized I forgot conditioner, so I figured I would just grab a towel and ask Saori-san if I could borrow some conditioner."

Darien, staring determinedly over her shoulder at the wall, could not help a smirk. "And you thought maybe you could bond over a bottle of conditioner?"

Serena heaved a long-suffering sigh, shooting him an annoyed look. "Don't make fun of me."

"What _else _am I supposed to do in a situation like this?" said Darien with a note of sarcasm. As he looked from the corner of his eyes at the beads of water slipping down her collarbone and at how far her towel had ridden up when she sat down despite all her best efforts, he could think of a _lot_ of other things to do in a situation like this.

Serena sighed again. "Well, no one answered when I knocked, anyway, so I guess she wasn't there."

Wasn't there, my foot, Darien thought.

"So I figured I would just have to go back to my room and call downstairs for a few of those little bottles of conditioner. But…"

Serena trailed off, yanking her towel back over her head and hanging it in mortification.

"But you hadn't brought your room key with you, had you?" Darien shook his head. "Classic Odango."

"Don't call me that!" Serena wailed, stamping her bare foot on the carpet.

Darien smiled a little and got up, switching on the bedside lamp before going to where he had left his travel bag in the corner.

Serena caught the t-shirt he tossed to her and unfolded it, smoothing it out over her lap. She pursed her lips at it, then looked back up. "Actually, can I have your track sweatshirt?"

Darien gave her a Look.

"I'm cold!" she said defensively.

He snorted and pulled off the white hoodie off over his head, grimacing as the cold air touched his bare arms.

"See?" Serena said superiorly, noticing his grimace. "It IS cold."

He glared at her, going to the wall where the thermostat was located to turn up the heat. "I've worn that three times without washing it, just so you know," he told her, hoping at least to gross her out as vengeance for her depriving him of the sweatshirt.

But all she said was, "I don't mind."

Darien kept his eyes on the thermostat as she put the pullover on, trying to be a gentleman. But it didn't really make a difference. Why would he need to watch with his eyes when his other senses could perceive everything so clearly? The sounds of the cotton fabric slipping over her head, the warm ripple of shampoo-scented aura as the towel slid to the floor, the flush of heat that radiated out through the air until she pulled the pullover the rest of the way down…

"Okay," she said. "You can turn around now."

He didn't turn around immediately, instead taking a moment to train his expression and to surreptitiously feel his lips with his tongue to make sure that no elongated canines were sticking out. And even then, for good measure, he reached into his suitcase, fished around for his pajama pants, and threw them at her behind his back.

"Put those on," he said, and immediately felt embarrassed by how rough his voice sounded.

Serena must have noticed it, too, but she didn't make fun of him. She just shimmied quickly into the pants and said, more quietly than before, "Okay."

He hadn't planned to meet her eyes, but her face was the first thing his eyes went to when he turned around. Her cheeks were burning pink, and she was looking at the wall behind him instead of at him.

"So I guess I'll call the front desk now," she said, almost brightly.

"Right," he said.

_**CRASH!**_ a clap of thunder said.

The bedside lamp flickered and went out.

"You've got to be kidding me." Darien transformed his irises, letting the muscles stretch his pupils wide like an owl's to absorb the meager light from the rain-lashed window. "Serena?"

As his eyes adjusted, he saw that she was pressed against the wall, her fists clenched at her sides.

Her voice wavered but, despite its tightness, managed a note of teasing. "You planned this, didn't you, Shields?"

"_No_," he said, and stopped, incensed by how husky his voice had come out sounding again. He shoved a hand through his hair and let his pupils shrink back to human size. Being able to see Serena shivering in his sweatshirt and pants was too much for even a superhuman to handle.

He tried to drag his mind to mundane matters. Like, uh… "Your hair is going to knot."

"I know." Awkwardly. "That's why I needed conditioner."

"I've got a comb."

There was a pause, as though they were both acknowledging the tension that was crackling through the room.

Then Serena said, "Do you really? I'd never have guessed it from the way your hair looks most days."

He threw her a mock-scowl and the comb from his suitcase. "Just for that, you can comb it yourself."

She caught it. "You were going to comb it for me?"

Hearing it said aloud, it sounded much more bizarre and inappropriate than it had when he had contemplated it.

"No," he said, but was immediately met with a "Please?"

Darien sighed and sat down the bed. As she settled down on the carpet in front of him, her shoulder blades against his knees, he told her warningly, "Teenage girls aren't the only ones with hyperactive imaginations, you know."

"I know." She laughed. "Think of what Coach would imagine if he came in and found us."

This prospect was enough to make Darien blanch and scoot back. "Maybe you should go back to your room."

"What?" said Serena indignantly. "In the dark with all this thund–?"

As though she was the one with the power over storms and not him, another clap of thunder roared and split the darkness with lightning.

She jumped, seizing his ankle. "No way!"

"Fine." The feeling of her small, cold hands on his ankle had taken away any free will he might have had. He started combing her hair, blood pounding happily in various pleasant parts of his anatomy – like his ears, for example.

He managed to stay coherent enough to say, without very much conviction, "But once I've finished combing it, you should go back to your room."

Serena grumbled, but smugly. Probably because she knew how very long it would take to comb out her meters-long tresses. Probably hours. Longer if she pretended it really hurt when he tugged at the knots and made him go slower and gentler.

Darien cleared his throat.

Then he pulled all of her hair up into his lap, spreading it out across the bed sheets beside him. It had been so long since he had the opportunity to hold her in his Tuxedo Mask form, falling through the air and feeling her hair flying all around him, that he had forgotten just how very long it was. So long that trying methodically to part the damp mass into manageable strands to comb was practically impossible.

"You could just transform and detransform to have it all perfect again, you know," he said to her after a while, as her head began to bob sleepily against his thigh.

She turned slightly to yawn up at him, her chin settling on his knee. "But this is nice," she mumbled.

This silenced any more such comments from Darien.

He hadn't even gotten through half of her curls, which were now only damp instead of wet and were beginning to curl around his fingers with even more enthusiasm than when they were dry, when he felt the weight of her head settle against his leg.

Leaning forward, craning his neck to see her face under her bangs, Darien saw that her eyes were closed. In the dim light from the rain-lashed window, her eyelashes cast long shadows across her silver-laced cheeks.

He smiled softly and leaned forward, brushing the hair back from her ear. It was soft and small, and he brushed his lips across it.

Serena shifted and murmured something. Darien froze, hovering there with his lips at her ear, his heart pounding. This would be it. If she turned and looked up at him now, with dreamy blue eyes, he would tell her. _I love you._

But her breathing evened out again, and she only snuggled deeper into his lap. Darien sighed and bent to rest his face against her damp curls.

Outside, the rain drummed against the windows.

"That's it. I'm gonna go get Buji."

"Shields'll kill you," mumbled Lita. But after fighting youma since three o'clock Thursday afternoon straight through until after midnight that morning – Saturday – she was too tired to put any particular insistence in her voice.

Instead, her head just sort of lolled to the side, and she began to snore, her forehead mashed against one of Mikai's keyboards.

"Well, it's that or call him and Serena back from their track meet." Asanuma glanced at Mikai and Motoki to see if they thought this was a good idea. They both shook their heads.

"Coach Etoukou would literally follow them back," said Motoki. His voice was hoarse He had fought two more youma after the one he encountered with Rini, though neither of him had made him black out the way that first one had. But they had each taken far more effort out of him than that first youma, at least ten cringing lightning bolts each, and now Motoki was little more than a shivering bundle of nerves and exhaustion. He badly wanted just to fall asleep on the table next to Lita, protected by the familiar smell of her coconut shampoo and the sound of her soft snoring, that it was almost enough to make him cry.

"Then it's agreed. We don't need to call them." Asanuma adjusted the headband holding his sweaty blond hair off his forehead. Truth be told, he kind of wanted to prove that he – and the others – could handle a Black Moon attack just fine without Darien swooping in to save the day. It was a contrary, ugly sort of desire like the one that made him so badly want to tell Motoki that he was going to die.

He tried to reassure himself by using logic to justify the decision. "This isn't really that big a deal. The Black Moon was bound to get smart sometime and start sending bursts of youma all at once to tire us out instead of sending them one at a time for us to pick off at our leisure. It's just them improving their tactics. It's not like they're launching some big, climactic assault on the city."

Mikai pulled the sweaty bandanna from his head and Looked at Asanuma. "What do you think a big, climactic assault _is_?"

Asanuma bristled. "They'd be using way more powerful youma if they were doing that. Only three of the ones we dealt with had human youma with them." He sobered slightly, remembering the one that he and Lita had run into. Mikai had also encountered one, and Lita, fighting on her own, had encountered another, but the same long-haired man had appeared and vanished with the human youma before anything could be done. "The other, what – three? Four? - attacks were just the black youma. That's normal."

"Normal." Motoki laughed a little. His eyes were red. "We're calling youma _normal_!" He began to laugh some more, louder, until water ran from his eyes.

Asanuma looked at Mikai. The green-haired man was levering himself up from his chair, slowly, as the leg injury he'd gotten from his third youma, in the park, wasn't quite healed yet. Limping into his kitchen, he returned with a cold can of soda and pushed it into Motoki's hand.

"I'd give you a beer," he said as Motoki shuddered and forced himself to take a long swallow, "but – "

"I'm under-age," Motoki said immediately.

" – the last thing we need is you hurling when we're fighting youma," finished Mikai with a suppressed smile.

Motoki flushed. "Oh. Yeah."

Asanuma looked back at the news channel streaming on one of Mikai's desktop computers. It was still running footage from one of the attack sites they'd already taken care of, not a new one, which meant that so far, no new youma had attacked.

"It's been almost two hours without another attack," said Motoki, following Asanuma's eyes. "Do you think they're done?"

"I hope so," said Asanuma without moving his eyes from the screen. "But if they're not, we're taking Buji to help with the next one. Lita's wiped."

Mikai was tugging his bandanna back on. "What I want to know is, if this isn't some grand assault, what were all these youma attacks _for_?"

"Why did I ask you to release so many youma, Emerald?"

Prince Diamond's voice was deadly soft. Where she knelt before him, head bowed and long green hair brushing the floor, Emerald was simultaneously excited and frightened by the danger that ran like a current beneath it. Her excitement was all the headier because Diamond had stepped slowly down from his throne to tower above her, his pant leg almost brushing her forehead. This close, she could feel the heat radiating from his skin.

"My prince…" She clenched her fingers to keep from tracing them sinuously around his ankle, under his pant hem, up his powerful leg. "You wished to make sure that Sailor Moon came out to battle."

Diamond had moved closer yet: his voice came from just above her head, as though he had leaned down toward her. "Then here," he breathed, "is she, Emerald?"

Emerald's eyelids fluttered shut from the exquisite sensation of his breath against the shell of her ear. "My prince…"

_"Cease this, Highness. She is enjoying your attentions._" The Wiseman floated closer, and Emerald's eyes slitted open to glare at him from behind her hair. "_It is out of her power to ensure that the Princess comes to battle. Neither she nor Endymion appeared at any of the youma attacks that Emerald arranged. They must know that the princess's location had been compromised."_

Silence came from above Emerald. She listened hard, no longer bothering to glare at the Wiseman, for he had been acting for her benefit, after all: he was trying to stop Diamond from finding the moon bitch.

"_Simple youma attacks, then, will not draw her out_," the Wiseman said softly, drifting closer to Diamond. "_Only for the little princess will Serenity come to fight_." He drifted closer yet. "_Capture the child princess, my prince, and Serenity will come._"

More silence.

"Fine," said Diamond at last. He turned on his heel, and his cape, smelling of dark voids and crackling power, brushed across Emerald's face. "Find her. Capture her and bring her to me. Do it _soon_." His voice was as dark as the smell of his cape. "Or I will kill you."

**A/N:** Another build-up chapter. It was originally twice as long, but I decided to split it so that I could get feedback on both halves. Enjoy this half while you can because after this the angst hits the fan. ^-^


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary:** How do you foresee a separate stream of time? It branches off at one event, one thought, among trillions. Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask confront their pasts, their futures, and the sins that brought them together in this sequel to Subject to Change.

**A/N**: The moment we've all been waiting for. Now with a handy-dandy…cliffhanger!

Thank you as always to **Jade,** who puts up with me even when _I_ won't put up with me.

This chapter has a **Gore and Language Warning**.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Sailor Moon or anything else.

**Subject to Change**

Season 2

Chapter Thirty-Two: This Revelatory Moment

"Glad to see you didn't fall flat on your face, Odango Atama."

Serena, flushed and sweaty as she turned from the track meet volunteer handing her a bottle of water, looked around, and saw Darien standing against the water table. She gave him a scowl, squinting again the late Saturday morning sunshine.

"At least I didn't sleep in and almost miss my first race," she shot back, shaking her water bottle at him.

Unfortunately, she hadn't realized it was open. Water sloshed out and arced toward Darien.

He raised a lazy hand to stop it with his powers, then seemed to realize where they were and stepped backward hastily.

Unfortunately, this revealed something that he had hoped to put off the unveiling of for as long as possible.

Serena stared.

She had seen many hilarious sights in her life. Including, but not limited to, Motoki wearing no pants under his apron, the Chinese food guy from the mall asking Darien out on a date, and an old lady chasing Asanuma out the girls' bathroom with her walker.

But the sight of Darien in the short, short, _short_ Infinity track shorts was, hands down, the most hilarious.

"Maybe it's those shorts that drive you to join Chaos!" she gasped out when she had recovered enough from her fits of laughter to breathe. Then she burst into howling laughter all over again, pounding the grass with her fists.

Even Darien couldn't help grinning at this, to his vague surprise. It was the first time he had thought about his future self's alliance without his whole body going cold and nauseous. He watched her roll around on the grass, clutching her stomach and attracting stares from the other runners and coaches around them.

Still, comforting or not, this wasn't something that could be taken lying down. Darien crouched down, in those abominable track shorts, and said lowly, "I'd like to remind you that I never said anything the times I saw you transform, Miss Birthday Suit."

That shut Serena up.

"How was the meet?"

Haruka slid into the passenger seat, tossing her duffel bag into the back. She shrugged. "Fine. We qualified for the national meet. Did Ittou do anything?"

"Fought. The Black Moon decided to run a youma marathon this weekend. It's almost like they knew Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask weren't around." Michiru pulled out of the parking lot, glancing into the rearview mirror through her dark sunglasses. Serena and Darien Shields were still in the parking garage, the blonde girl sitting on the back of his red car and howling with laughter as the mustached track coach said something to Darien and then tackled him in a hug. She wondered if they even knew what all had gone on this weekend. Honestly, she had expected them to come charging back to the city to save their friends. The Serena that Haruka was so enamored of certainly would have.

Michiru forced her thoughts away from this. "What about on your end?" she asked.

When there was no answer, Michiru's eyes flicked away from the mirror to Haruka only to see that Haruka was watching the scene behind them, too, in the side-view mirror. With unhappiness tugging at her mouth, Michiru turned her attention back to the road and pulled out of the parking garage, out of sight of Serena and the others.

Haruka cleared her throat and stretched. "Sorry, what were you saying?"

_Are you in love with her?_ Michiru bit down on her lip, hard, before she could say it. "I missed you."

"Did you?" Haruka grinned, but it was tight, nervous, and only lasted a second before lapsing into a frown as she stared out the window. She muttered something as she crossed her arms tightly over her chest.

It sounded painfully like, "You shouldn't have."

Serena closed Darien's cell phone, frowning. "No one's answering."

He glanced over from behind the steering wheel. "No one?" She shook her head. His knuckles whitened around the steering wheel. "Did you try Helios?"

Serena had completely forgotten that Darien had said he'd given Helios a cell phone. She scrolled down the list of contacts to find his name. "You're sure it'll work in Elysion?"

Darien had accelerated the car; they were now zooming down the streets toward Mikai's place. "Yes. We tested it." His voice was taut, nothing like the joking tone it had held during the meet.

Serena felt the same. All the excitement and pride she had felt at winning first place in all of her races but one – Darien had done almost as well, placing first in both of his sprints and the relay and second place in his two longer-distance races – was zooming away like water down a bathtub drain. The meet seemed suddenly like a fleeting dream, with reality racing back in to remind her that there was no way to escape the world of youma and fighting and being afraid when your friends didn't answer their phones.

The phone rang once, twice, in her ear. Then it was picked up, and Helios's voice said uncertainly, "Darien-sama?"

"Helios!" Serena burst out. "It's Serena. Darien's with me. Is Rini with you?"

"Yes, she is still here." Helios's voice was still uncertain. "Can you tell us what is going on? No one has called or come to tell us if the youma are still attacking."

"Still attacking?" echoed Serena, her senses already sweeping out to search the vicinity for any trace of youma aura. But she sensed none. "What are you talking about?"

The car barreled into Mikai's driveway. Darien was already darting out of the car, not bothering to shut the door behind him, and pounding up the front steps. Serena scrambled out of the car and after him, half-listening to Helios's words in the phone: "…ni-hime arrived and said that there were many youma attacking at once…"

Her attention failed completely when she saw a reddish-brown streak on Mikai's front door that looked like dried blood.

Darien flung the door open; whether he had a spare key or had used magic, Serena didn't know. They burst into the front hall and then the living room. Everyone was there: Lita and Asanuma and Motoki and Mikai. Mikai was slumped over one of his keyboards; Asanuma was sprawled spread-eagle on the floor; Lita was sitting upright on the floor with her back and head propped against the wall; and Motoki was in the same position in the opposite corner of the room.

They were all transformed, and they all looked to be unconscious, or…

"Asleep," said Darien firmly, apparently reading the direction that her thoughts were taking. He took another step into the room. "They're just sleeping. We can still sense them." He took the phone from her. Belatedly, she remembered that Helios was still on the other end. "Helios, we'll call you back in a minute."

He shut the phone and crouched down in front of Motoki. Serena saw golden light begin to glow in his hands as he held them over one of Motoki's arms. She wondered which of them had left the bloody mark on the door and crept quietly to Lita, taking in the livid cut healing slowly on her blood-grimed cheek and wishing that she could help heal the Senshi the way Darien could heal the Shittenou. What had happened while they were gone? Helios had said a youma attack, but then why hadn't Lita and the others called her and Darien?

Darien apparently had the same question. He went quietly to each of his Shittenou, healing them with the Golden Crystal – it was Mikai who had left the bloody mark on the front door; his eyebrow ring had gotten torn out while he was fighting – and when they were all conscious, blinking like they were trying to remember where they were, he spoke in a voice that was almost a growl.

"What happened?"

Serena, from her spot with her arm around a still weak Lita, listened with widening eyes as the guys related how youma had begun attacking almost as soon as she and Darien left. Their account of how the human youma could now suck energy was horrifying, but what penetrated her more deeply, at this moment, was that they hadn't contacted her and Darien. The two of them had spent the weekend having more fun than she could remember having had in months, and meanwhile, Lita and the others had been struggling to fight youma after youma.

Darien looked as unhappy as she felt. From the turmoil of his aura, she thought he was about to begin shouting or transforming, but instead, he only asked, "Where's Buji?"

"Home," said Mikai promptly. "We weren't going to call him."

"Oh, yes, we were." Asanuma spoke for the first time since he had woken up. There were funny-looking red marks on the side of his face from where his cheek had pressed against the carpet while he was sleeping, but there was nothing funny about his expression. "If we needed him, we would have called him to help. He's a Shittenou just like us."

"You would have called him to help," said Darien in a slow, quiet voice, the one that always made the air go still and heavy, "but you didn't call us."

"You know, Dare, did you ever stop to think that maybe not everything is about you? We– "

" – don't even care what kind of danger you put yourselves in, apparently– "

"– can handle youma just as well as you can– "

" – if you were hurt, it would by _my_ fault– "

" – so give the tortured hero act a rest–"

They were talking over each other, their voices rising in volume until they were shouting. Then Darien's eyes flared a hot gold, and he roared, "I'M_ RESPONSIBLE_ FOR ALL OF YOU!"

They were all quiet. The air boiled around them.

"You're Shittenou because of _me_," Darien snapped at Asanuma. "The reason you have powers and have to risk your lives fighting youma is because of _me_. So the next time there's a youma, you _will _call me, or I swear – "

"You think we fight youma because of YOU?" Whatever spell had silenced Asanuma had worn off. His face was still red, now with fury, and he had shot to his feet. "Because you're some mystical prince we're supposed to protect? News flash, you idiot! It wouldn't matter if Coach Etoukou or the Dalai Lama gave us our powers, we'd still be using them to protect people! The fact that we have our powers because of YOU doesn't have a fucking thing to do with it."

There was silence, filled only with harsh breathing, for a minute.

Then Lita groaned, clutching her head. "Speaking of fucking, I'm fucking sick of all these male pissing contests between you idiots. Let's get out of here, Serena."

She may or may not have meant for the comment to lighten the atmosphere. It did, a little, but only for Motoki and Mikai, who laughed a little nervously and got to their feet. Darien and Asanuma remained glaring at each other, even as Serena, with one last glance over her shoulder, helped Lita into the hallway and down Mikai's front steps. She tried to comfort herself with the memory of how, the last time Asanuma and Darien had a blow-out fight, over whether to train Buji or not, they had been back to their usual relationship by the next day.

"Do you want to crash at my place?" she asked Lita, who was still having to put a lot of her weight on Serena.

"Maybe that would be nice," Lita yawned. They made their way through the falling twilight to Serena's house, Lita trying to keep her eyelids open and Serena trying to refrain from asking if she was _really _alright after Lita told her to stop sweating it already.

"You know, if any of them were _real _gentlemen, they would have driven us home instead of kept glaring at each other," she remarked as she and Serena finally reached Serena's front walk.

Serena couldn't argue with that.

_"Emerald."_

"Wiseman." She did not look up from the crystals cupped in her palms. They contained the scant few youma she had left. No more than five.

_"What are you planning?"_

Her gloved fingers curled around the crystals. "You'll see."

_"I did not give you those Death Hands so that they would be wasted when Prince Diamond catches and executes you for killing his princess."_

"Not his princess!" shouted Emerald. Her chest heaved. "She's not his. _I_'m his." Her eyes glittered, and under her black gloves, her Death Hands pulsed with a black-bloody light. "And she's _mine._"

_Mine to kill._

The next day, Monday, Serena had the first night patrol shift. She stuck close to her house for the first hour or so, her senses stretched out for youma instead of heading straight into the city to patrol, because she was afraid her mother would come to her room to check that she and Rini were in there. Rini had spent most of the weekend in Elysion with her body still in Serena's room, sleeping in her bed. From what she had mumbled to Serena, seeming too tired to talk much, the six year-old had woken up every once in a while over the weekend to tell Ikuko that she wasn't feeling good and was going to be sleeping so that Ikuko would believe that she was just sick. But Serena still had the feeling that Ikuko was still a little scared and suspicious. She should probably ask Darien to come hypnotize her to forget the weekend.

She would like to forget the weekend herself, actually, she thought, her fingers coming up to touch the spot above her collarbone where Darien's locket rested when she wasn't transformed. She could still remember, as if they were still there, the sensation of Darien's fingers combing through her hair, his knuckles brushing against the back of her neck. It was a very distracting memory, so distracting that she only sensed the pressure of a youma presence when a branch from the tree she was perched in whapped her in the face.

Rubbing her eye, she took off immediately for the presence. With relief, she noted that the youma did not have that nausea-inducing feel of a human youma but instead just of a normal one. She got a glimpse of a black-faced youma in the midst of a line of people waiting for a table at an upscale restaurant. The line wound all the way around the street corner, and she kept to the shadows of the restaurant's rooftop, slinking through them, lest one of the people see her and send up a shout that would alert the youma she was there.

With a speed that would hopefully render her no more than a blur to human eyes, she somersaulted off the restaurant's canvas entrance canopy straight onto the faceless youma's shoulders. She plunged her sword into its head in what was quickly becoming her neatest, most effective move.

As the youma crumbled to dust beneath her, she bent her knees, transferring her sword to a one-handed grip so that she could use one hand to catch herself and spread out the impact that her feet would absorb.

But something must have gone wrong. Because one minute the slushy sidewalk was rushing up to meet her, and the next, she was groaning and opening her eyes.

"About time, Muffinhead!"

Serena's eyes snapped wide open. She bolted up, staring at the man leaning over her. "_Haruka_?"

Her teammate put a hand to her arm. "Not so fast! You were unconscious."

"Yeah, I…"

Serena looked around, seeing that they were sitting on a bench under a bus shelter, not far from the restaurant where the youma had attacked. She could hear the sounds of sirens very close. She rocked to her feet.

"Hey!" Haruka caught her arm. "I just got you out of there! Don't go running back!" He squeezed tighter as Serena tried to pull away. "The youma already left. Those sirens are from ambulances taking the people who got their energy drained to the hospital."

"They…" Serena looked up at him. "You mean the youma got away?"

He shrugged. "I guess it must have. There weren't any Senshi that I saw."

"You were there?"

"Yeah, I was waiting in line to get inside the restaurant." Haruka loosened his grip on her arm, as though he could tell that she wasn't trying to run back to the site of the attack anymore. "When I realized there was a youma there, I turned around to get the hell out of there. But I saw you lying unconscious in the middle of the sidewalk. God!" His grip on her arm tightened all over again, and he shook her. "You scared the HELL out of me, Serena!"

"Sorry," said Serena automatically. "So you brought me here?"

"_Yes_," said Haruka, clearly still angry.

What the former Formula 1 racer had not mentioned was the green-haired Black Moon witch who had appeared behind Serena as she dusted the youma and knocked her unconscious with a single blow. If Haruka had not been there at that very moment and sent a wind slashing up at the demoness, driving her off…

"I'm sorry," said Serena automatically again, totally oblivious to Haruka's thoughts. "Thank you, Haruka." She fingered the knot she could feel on her scalp where she must have bashed herself in the head with the blunt end of her sword and breathed silent thanks that getting knocked unconscious had knocked her transformation out as well.

She did _not_ breathe silent thanks that she had gotten knocked unconscious and not saved everyone from the youma.

"Do you know if anyone…died?"

Haruka shrugged. "I guess we'll find out." His voice didn't seem very concerned, but maybe he had used up all his worry on her. He was still watching her intently, chewing his bottom lip, his face pale.

He must really have been scared. It was easy to forget how frightening even a normal youma attack like this must be for civilians. How frightening it must have been for him to stick back long enough to pick her up when the youma was still attacking.

Serena put her hand on Haruka's shoulder, meeting his eyes. "That was incredibly brave of you, Haruka-kun," she said honestly. "I owe you big time for saving me."

His worried look softened and gave way to a sly look. "Are we talking willing-to-date-me-again-owe-me?"

Before Serena could make an uncomfortable reply, Haruka laughed. "I'm kidding. I know you were probably waiting at that restaurant for Shields to come so you could two could have a romantic dinner in there."

"I – "

"Don't even try to deny it. I've seen you guys in track. You're head over heels." Haruka tugged on her hair playfully. "I can't blame you. He braids a heck of a lot better than I do."

Serena smiled bashfully up at him and let him tug. She knew that she and Haruka weren't meant to be, not romantically, but she still felt that magnetic pull toward him that had first made her think she could love him. The same magnetic pull that could make her feel better even though she had just majorly messed up a youma battle.

"The hair-styling is part of it," she admitted, impishly. But then she looked up at him. "But Haruka, I didn't just break up with you because of Darien. It was because I saw the way you looked at Miss Kaioh."

Haruka blinked.

Serena blinked back. And her forehead creased as she realized that Haruka looked grave, suddenly. His brows were drawn together, dark eyes pained.

Then the expression disappeared, and he leaned back, crossing his arms. "Miss Kaioh? No way. She's, like, _old_."

"She is not!" said Serena indignantly, distracted from Haruka's strange mood swing by this insult to the woman who had become one of her favorite teachers. "I bet she's barely older than us! She's just so graceful that she SEEMS older."

"Just like you're so klutzy that you SEEM younger?" Haruka ruffled Serena's hair. "Geeze. ME, like Miss Kaioh? What kind of crazy sensei-student manga have you been reading, Muffinhead?"

Serena jutted out her chin. "Say what you want. I know you like her. You don't look at someone like that unless you like them."

"Oh, you mean the way you look at Shields?"

Serena turned red.

Haruka laughed and ruffled her hair again. "You're a good kid, Muffin Head. You shouldn't have had to deal with those youma."

"No one should have to deal with them," Serena muttered darkly, her mood sinking again. She stood up, turning to head home so that she could see the news and call the others. Then something occurred to her, and she looked back over her shoulder. "Thanks again for helping me, Haruka-_nii-san_."

Haruka's poleaxed expression was _almost _as priceless as Darien's track shorts.

"Ah, Mr. Chiral. I was wondering when Emerald would send you." Dr. Tomoe did not pause in his dissection of the vaguely humanoid-shaped body on his examination table. "Come over here and get my phone out of my pocket, would you?"

The droid, who had just stepped out of a void into the sterile white room, narrowed his eyes but did not voice his dislike of being ordered around by someone who was not Mistress Emerald. He reached into the front pocket of Tomoe's white coat and withdrew the phone.

"Speed-dial number five," said Tomoe, turning over the body's leg and lifting away a charred flap of skin with a small metal probe. "Put it on speaker-phone."

Chiral obeyed. In a moment, the loud sound of rings filled the small white room.

The line rang, and rang…and rang.

Tomoe frowned as he probed through the soft tissue. "Well," he said softly as the message went straight to voicemail, a generic voice saying that they had reached mailbox number 7245, and they could leave a message after the beep.

"Hang up," said Tomoe shortly.

Chiral obeyed.

"That is the third time Mr. Hino has failed to answer my call." Tomoe straightened and stripped the gloves from his hands, dropping them into a wastebasket and striding out of the room. Chiral followed him out into the hallway, where he walked briskly to a room at the end of the hall, from which snarls could be heard.

"Hush, you'll scare Mr. Artemis," said Tomoe blandly, donning a fresh pair of gloves and unlocking the door. "Mr. Chiral, I will be requiring your assistance yet again."

Pursing his lips, Chiral ducked past Tomoe into the room. This was his least favorite of Tomoe's creations, a human-youma-crossed thing with black fur and glistening yellow teeth in a misshapen snout beneath human eyes. It was made from the Terran prince's blood. Mistress had wanted it for her last attacks, but Tomoe had persuaded her otherwise, probably because he had planned to use it himself. Chiral's eyes narrowed further.

The creature lunged for him. Chiral blurred behind it and seized it by the scruff of its neck, lifting it into the air. It whined, thrashing in his grip. He looked at Tomoe.

Tomoe was reaching into his pocket. "Ah," he said, and withdrew a stoppered test tube. From it, he withdrew a pale blue paper check with a pair of tweezers and held it in front of the creature's snout.

It inhaled and went still.

"Fetch," said Tomoe.

The creature tensed – then lunged from Chiral's hand into a black void that swirled up in front of it.

"Follow it, Mr. Chiral," said Tomoe lazily. "And call me when you've found him."

Chiral nodded and stepped into the void after the creature.

Her breath caressed up his bare chest. His lungs were tight, constricted, as her fingers followed her mouth's path up his skin. Pressure built inside him so painfully that it felt as though something solid was lodged in his chest. He opened his mouth to suck in a deep breath to ease it, but now she was kissing him, desperate and eager and stinging. He slid his hands into her hair even though the pain was horrible, wanting to feel her strangely straight hair twine around his fingers the way her arms were twining around his neck –

She tore her mouth away. He heard her sob, and her weight fell against him. The pain in his chest exploded, and he realized, belatedly, that it wasn't _as though_ something was lodged in his chest, there really was something there, something long, sharp and metal, buried to its hilt, and then came the crying, "_Endymion_ – "

Darien bolted up in his bed. "Shit. Shit shit shit–" Sweat poured down his face and neck, a sour taste rising in his mouth like bile. He stumbled out of his blankets to the floor, pressing his palms to his eyes; his insides were roiling as though they really had been run through by a sword. He retched over the toilet, stomach heaving.

Nothing came up. He hadn't really been stabbed, after all, it had just been another dream about Endymion's final moments in the Silver Millennium. But it wasn't the memory of how it had felt to feel his life and insides dripping away that was making his stomach heave. It was the memory of who he had been kissing and what he had wanted. He had thought it was Serena at first, had been so sure it was her. Scenarios like that, with her, had begun to invade his sleep and his dreams about the princess with pleasant frequency after that night in the hotel room on Thursday. He had wanted her so badly, and for as long as he thought it was her, that had been alright.

But there had come a point in the dream when he, Darien, had recognized that something was off, that the girl wasn't Serena, her hair was too straight and stiff to be Serena's soft curls, her voice too shrill and pleading.

But he had _still_ wanted her.

Darien tried to retch again, as though he could vomit up the desire he had felt. Again, nothing came. He pressed his forehead to the cool porcelain and tried to make his body stop trembling. He tried to concentrate hard enough to sink down and find that thick metal door inside him, the one that Endymion was still supposed to be locked behind. The one that was supposed to keep Darien from feeling things like this. God, he'd wanted her, he'd wanted the _princess_ – the memory of her delicate fingers on his skin burst into his mind, and he felt his breath quicken all over again, anticipation coiling in him.

"_No_," he gritted out. His fingers clenched the toilet seat so tightly that the porcelain cracked. The sound was loud, almost deafeningly so, right beside his ear, and it cleared his brain somewhat.

He stumbled into the shower, wrenching it on and letting the cold spray soak him right through his t-shirt and pajama pants. He stood there until he was shivering, and then he got out, dressed in his uniform, water dripping from his hair to the thin white uniform shirt, and then he transformed, taking off at a run through the gray pre-dawn light to the tree outside Serena's window. He stayed there, huddling in the shade of her aura the same way that he had huddled under the shower spray.

Only when he felt her starting to wake up did he go back to his apartment building to get his car and pick everyone up for school.

"No homework again, Mr. Itto?"

Asanuma blinked blearily, turning his head to squint up at the calculus teacher. "Nope," he yawned.

"This is not the sort of conduct we expect of Infinity Academy students, Mr. Itto."

Asanuma's eyes were already closing again. It was hard to be intimidated by a chubby, balding human like Mr. Kureno after facing off with a furious Darien. "Uh-huh…" he mumbled dismissively.

Even if he had planned to do his homework, which he hadn't, he wouldn't have been able to do it. He had forgotten his backpack with all his books inside it at Mikai's place sometime last week even before that youma spree and hadn't remembered to pick it up until this morning, when he got back from his patrol at five a.m.

"Are you even listening to me?"

Come to think of it, today was Wednesday. He was supposed to have an entry for the art contest today. That was a piece of homework he'd actually been kind of thinking about doing… He might have sat down to begin it, the same way he'd sat down to begin practicing his Spanish impromptu and math homework the first few days of school, but he would have started thinking about the future, and his lack thereof, and dying. And he would have looked up finally to see his clock on the wall and realized that two more, three more, four more hours of his life had passed without him realizing it, and he would have decided that there was no point wasting time on stupid high school art contests and grades when so little time was left.

Mr. Kureno's hand slammed on his desktop. "Do you have any ambition whatsoever, Mr. Itto, or are you content with spending your life behind a fast food counter?"

He supposed he did need to get a job, though. Somewhere down the line he would need to be able to take care of Rini. How expensive could it be to keep up a little girl and himself? Probably he could just tell Darien and Mikai to stop wasting time making weapons and just make a whole stockpile of precious gems for Asanuma to set aside for the future. A faint, bitter smile touched his lips. He wouldn't need a lot. Just enough for six years, since he'd be dead after that, and Rini would be someone else's concern.

He snorted.

"You think this is funny?"

Asanuma blinked awake as a paper was slapped on his head. He looked up to see the pink slip fluttering from his head to the top of his desk was a discipline referral.

"Get out your book," the teacher snapped. "Then, when class is over, you can go spend some quality time with Principal Knight."

Asanuma just yawned again. Eyes falling back half-closed again, he leaned down, grabbing blindly for his calculus book in his backpack.

His hands encountered something he couldn't remember packing. A sheaf of papers stuffed in a folder. Had Buji accidentally put his homework in Asanuma's backpack on one of their training days?

Asanuma forced his eyelids open again, pulling the folder out and opening it. His eyes flicked across the top sheet.

And he stuffed the papers back into his bag.

"I'll go see Principal Knight now, Mr. Kureno!" he said, seizing his bag. "Bye!" He careened out of the classroom into the hallway before the teacher could say anything, and sprinted for the stairs.

Down the endless stairs he sped, his blood pounding in his ears, and stopped at the door that opened into the parking garage, giving his breathing a minute to quiet down. Then he crept out the door, shutting it very carefully behind him, and crept past the security guard booth at the start of the tunnel that sloped up to the street.

A second guard booth was positioned right beside the sidewalk next to the city street that Infinity had been built on, able to catch all cars as soon as they tried to turn off the street and into the tunnel that sloped down into the Infinity Academy parking garage. But Asanuma could sense this guard was occupied making some sort of hot drink. With a hasty thought, he made it heat and bubble, splashing over the cup's rim and distracting the guard.

He took advantage of the man's distraction to shoot to his feet and into a sprint down the congested streets.

The wind was biting. He hadn't grabbed his overcoat before he'd left the school, so Asanuma could practically feel all of January's cold teeth tearing through him as he tore down the street But he ignored it, eyes searching for any alley between the elegant skyscrapers of Myugen. It took him two blocks, but he finally found one, and he ducked into it, hunkering behind a Dumpster that sheltered him from most of the wind.

He dug into his backpack, pulling out the papers he had found, and knelt on top of them with his hands splayed to keep the wind from blowing them away. After staring at them for a minute, he lifted one hand away from the fluttering papers and reached into his pocket for his cell phone.

As he waited for Mikai to answer, he shuffled through the papers, looking at the pages of sloppily drawn Punnett squares and lists of gametes and phenotypes with a mounting shortness of breath.

"Pick up the fucking phone, Mikai," he growled through chattering teeth, glaring at the papers. "Pick up the – "

"Hello?"

"Mikai! You fucking ass!"

"You know, as amusing as I find all your profanity, Asanuma, I've already been cussed out enough for not telling you about Rei – "

"This isn't about Rei, you bastard! Do you know what I just found in my backpack?"

There was silence on the other end of the phone. The sound of shuffling, then: "Shit."

"Shit is right," snapped Asanuma. "When were you planning to tell us Serena's the Moon Princess?"

The phone rang just as Darien pushed open his door that afternoon, Buji darting past him for the bathroom because, "I haven't gone all _day, _Darien-baka, I'm going to explode!"

Dropping the bag of fast food on the table–there was only one bag because Serena had informed him that she and Rini had some things to take care of today and wouldn't be joining them for dinner–Darien grabbed the phone. "Hello?"

"Hello. I'm calling to speak to Darien Shields?"

Darien frowned, trying to work past the sleep-deprivation fogging his brain to place the accented voice. It was familiar, but just barely. "This is him."

"Excellent. Darien, this is Dr. Ludisae from Yale University calling."

Darien's frown unknit. "Oh. Hi."

"Hello," returned the professor's voice. "How have you been?"

Darien glanced at Buji as the young boy came into the kitchen, sighing happily and jumping into a chair at the table to dump out the contents of the fast food bag. "Very busy, thanks. Actually, I've got to go–"

"This will only take a minute," said Dr. Ludisae's voice firmly. "I trust you know that Yale's admission deadline is this Friday?"

"No, I didn't know."

"Ah." Dr. Ludisae's voice seemed relieved. "Well, I knew there had to be a reason we hadn't received an application from you yet. Have you begun the online app yet?"

Darien drummed his fingers on the countertop, mentally debating the advantages of just hanging up. But he could just picture the reproachful frown Serena would give him. "No, sir. I'm not planning to apply."

There was a silence, broken only by the sound of Buji squeezing ketchup onto his fries, in which Darien could practically sense the man frowning.

"I am very sorry to hear that," Dr. Ludisae said at last. "May I ask why?"

"I have other priorities at the moment."

Another pause. "Darien, you will have to forgive my nosiness, but what priorities could possibly come above your education?"

For some reason, Darien wasn't sure why, Serena's attempt to befriend Saori by defending her to Mrs. Knight came to the front of his mind. He had been unable to figure out exactly why she was trying so hard to become friends with the other girl, unless it was that she wanted to show that she could still function among people who weren't Senshi or Shittenou, that she could like and be liked by someone who wasn't tied to her by soul-bonds or reincarnations or magical powers. Did she want to validate herself as a person, not just as a Senshi?

He thought of himself. He knew how to make ice from thin air and make his ears into those of a bat and sense a youma from kilometers away. But did he really understand yet how to be a person? How to be a friend? A father? He thought of Motoki, his face tired and drawn because Darien had not understood enough about friendship to realize when something was wrong with his friend, had not noticed his quiet grief in time to have stepped in and helped his father before it was too late. He thought of Rini, frowning at her homework with the same frustrated tears that he could remember from his own childhood but that he did not know how to soothe away.

He thought of Serena, who understood all these things. Serena, and the warm weight of her hand on his head. Not just in his kitchen as he untied the knot in her apron but in the hospital room last spring, when she had smoothed the sweaty hair from his face and he had decided that he would not go to Yale because he never, ever wanted to leave her.

That had been the first decision he had ever made completely, undoubtedly, of his own volition. Not because of a compulsion throbbing in his brain like the first time he had transformed into Tuxedo Mask, or because of the Moon Princess's pleading voice calling out to him in his dreams, or because of the powerful prince still living inside him. He had chosen to stay with Serena in _spite _of all these things. He loved her even though Endymion inside him still tried to pull him toward the Moon Princess.

It was his love for Serena that let him know he was still Darien and not Endymion.

"Darien?"

"I'm still here, Dr. Ludisae." Darien pushed away from the counter. "I appreciate you calling, but I really have no plans to leave Tokyo."

A pause. "You're sure?"

Darien smiled. "I'm sure."

"You know, we let it go that you were having your little rendezvous with Sailor Mercury in secret. And I didn't KILL you when I found out that you knew where Rei was ALL THIS TIME, but _this_."

Asanuma slammed the binder down on top of Mikai's desk, sending markers rolling off the edge and clattering on the floor.

"This is _bullshit._"

Mikai pulled the green bandanna from his head and rubbed his scalp. "At this point in time, I don't think it's in Darien's best interests to–"

"His best interests?" Asanuma snarled. He stabbed a finger at one of the papers in the binder, where Mikai had drawn a sketch of a pair of hands clasped, the fingers laced as though in prayer, and scrawled, _Right thumb on top of interlocked fingers = recessive; D, R, _and_ S all exhibit the recessive trait_. "What the hell do you think his best interests are? He's been fucking manic-depressive for the past year because he thinks Serena's NOT the princess!"

"Does he?" Mikai snapped. "You really don't think the possibility that she _is _has never occurred to him?"

Asanuma went still against Mikai's couch. He had been leaning against the arm, but now he crouched on it, looking like an animal about to lunge.

His voice was dangerously quiet. "What?"

Mikai inhaled through his nose. He had stood up when Asanuma came in. Now, he sat back down, his legs tense.

"I mean one of two things," he said. "First scenario: Sailor Pluto's memory block is keeping him from realizing it. Every time he considers the possibility of Serena being the Moon Princess, the block reroutes his thoughts down different pathways, possibly even to thoughts about how much he hates the princess. Or!" he said sharply as Asanuma rocked forward with something bursting from his lips. "Second scenario: Darien himself won't consider the possibility that Serena could be the princess."

"Why the hell would he do that?" It wasn't a question, more of a vocalization of how utterly moronic Asanuma thought this idea was. "He'd piss himself with joy if Serena was the princess!"

"Would he?"

Asanuma spun and tumbled one-legged from the couch. "Toki!"

The tall boy took off his backpack and coat. He hung up the latter and came to the couch, putting his bag next to his feet.

Then he looked at Mikai. "You don't think Darien would be happy, do you, Mikai-senpai?"

"I don't necessarily think that," said Mikai slowly. "I think that if the thought _has_ occurred to him, he might be blocking it out. He wouldn't want to get his hopes up and deal with the aftermath if it wasn't true. He was like that at the orphanage."

Asanuma was shaking his head. "That…that was then. It's different now."

"Maybe," said Motoki. But there was no _maybe_ in his voice.

He had something to say, Asanuma could tell. His tall friend was being his usual quiet self, but he wasn't following Mikai and Asanuma with his eyes the way he usually did when he was listening closely. He had his hands knotted around his knee and was staring at his fingers.

Asanuma slid down off the couch. "What are you thinking, Motoki?"

Motoki looked up.

"I think it could be either of those reasons," he said slowly. "But… I don't think it's that simple. You guys are acting like Darien wants to think that Serena's the Moon Princess."

"Of course he does," Asanuma said impatiently. "Why wouldn't he? Then he and Serena can be together."

Motoki went quiet again. The silence pushed a question mark into the air.

At last, Motoki spoke. "Darien _hates_ the Moon Princess."

"Because he thinks she's keeping him from Serena!" said Asanuma, loudly, but with a tinge of panic.

"But is that the only reason?" Motoki looked at them. "I mean, the Moon Princess is… well, she's Prince Endymion's soulmate. And Darien's been trying so hard to escape Endymion's flash-form."

He hesitated.

"Don't you think…" He hesitated again. "…if Serena was the Moon Princess, Darien would think that he only loved her because Endymion did?"

"Psst! Rini!"

Rini looked up, reluctantly. Serena was coming into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. She looked very pleased about something. Which meant that she still hadn't found out what Rini had done to Motoki. Rini still didn't know whether to feel relieved or even more guilty than before.

"Guess what?"

Rini rubbed her face. She couldn't think of anything that would make Serena so unabashedly pleased except… "There's a new flavor of ice cream at the ice cream parlor?"

Serena wilted for a minute, then bounced back, jumping onto the bed. "No. Better than that." She wriggled across her bedspread until she was hanging over the side of the bed, waving several slips of paper in front of Rini's nose. "Look! Tickets to the circus!"

"The circus?" Rini blinked at them.

"So you can make up with Asanuma," said Serena, becoming serious instead of jubilant. "I got them from Dad, he always gets free tickets through his job. Look, there's three, so you can ask Numa to take you and Buji."

Rini's stomach shifted uncomfortably. She wanted to – but she didn't want to. "I…"

Serena watched her expectantly.

Rini bit her lip. "…can't you come?" Serena would be able to keep her from doing anything. She was strong enough.

Serena tilted her head. For a minute, she pursed her lips, and Rini was sure she was going to say no. But then she sighed and ruffled Rini's hair. "Of course. Buji will just have to wait for another time."

For the second time in his life, Asanuma wondered if he was going through menopause.

The first time had been when he first started getting his Shittenou powers, when hot flashes would grip him in the middle of the night, making him feel unbearable hot, sweating for whole hours before releasing him. Now, he wasn't suffering from hot flashes, but he did feel incredibly out of control with his emotions. It seemed like he was going from one end of the mood-swing spectrum to another, from desperate grief to complete apathy to blistering rage.

Motoki's idea about why Darien would be upset that Serena was the Moon princess made no sense at all. None. None, none, none, none, _none_!

So why couldn't he stop thinking about it?

Asanuma made a disgusted sound, throwing his armored legs out over his windowsill. It wasn't his turn to patrol, but he would go even more insane than he already was if he stayed here in his bedroom even one second longer. He didn't want to think about anything anymore. Not about Darien, or Serena, or princes or princesses, or Rini or dying or Motoki or Mikai and how they wouldn't let him tell Darien that Serena _was probably the princess. _

He didn't want to think about anything.

Not so long ago, it would have been normal for a whole day to have passed without a youma attack. But after last weekend, it wasn't. Asanuma made his way to the city rooftops and ghosted across them with suspicion prickling at the back of his neck. There had to be a youma around here somewhere, and he was damned if he was going to let Mikai, whose turn it was to patrol, get to it and punch the pulp out of it before he did.

It _better_ the hell be a real youma and not a human one.

Sorrow swept through him at the spot, nullifying all the impotant rage, and he felt his shoulders slumping. What was the point, of anything? People were getting turned into youma, Toki's dad was dying, Serena might be the Moon Princess that everyone seemed to hate, he was going to die, and Rei was _gone_ –

Below him, there was a sudden chorus of cries. He looked down and saw people streaming out of a storefront. They were kids, wearing pointy party hats, all of them about Rini's age.

Asanuma swung down, pushed into the store – a sort of indoor play-place with miniature golf and plastic climbing tunnels that he could remember having one of his own birthday parties in when he was six or seven. There was a youma standing in the middle of the ball pit. It wasn't a black-faced youma, but it wasn't a human one either; at least it didn't look like it. It looked like one of the ones that had always attacked in the beginning, with the huge boobs and practically no clothing and weirdly-shaped hair. It was holding a tangle of energy strands in its arms, all of them coming from children sprawled around her, and she was looking through them, squinting.

"Blue, blue, blue," she complained, throwing them down. "No white!"

She looked up, and her eyes met Asanuma's. She opened her mouth, whether for an attack or an insult, Asanuma didn't know and didn't find out, for he cocked his hand back and whipped one of his _sai _straight at her.

It plunged straight into her chest and ignited in a burst of flame, setting her clothes and hair on fire. She screamed, and Asanuma flung his other _sai_. It, too, exploded with fire, eating up the rest of her body, and she collapsed into a pile of dust. The blue energy rushed back into the unsconscious bodies around her.

Asanuma sighed, walking over and bending to pick up both his _sai_ from the dust. He didn't feel better at all.

And he didn't notice the green-haired woman behind the skee-ball machine who bared her teeth at him before disappearing.

Serena's invitation to the circus came out of left field. Still distracted by thoughts of Mikai's Punnett Squares and Toki's words, and watching Serena without really listening to her because he was trying to figure out if she really was the princess, Asanuma nodded an absent "sure" before he really registered the question. Serena danced off happily, leaving Asanuma with a command to meet them – whoever "them" was – at the civic center where the circus was being held on Sunday night at seven.

"Them" turned out to be just her and Rini. Asanuma could have died from the awkwardness of it, considering that Rini still wasn't meeting his eyes, that Serena could be the Moon Princess, and that he was with Serena and Rini, on something almost like a date, and Darien would probably kill him.

Not that Asanuma was afraid of Darienbob Angstypants, of course.

To make things worse, Serena began to groan as they entered the crowd of people making their way through the vendors inside.

"I shouldn't have eaten all those marshmallows at home," she moaned. "I'm gonna run to the bathroom."

Asanuma looked at Rini as Serena began to push through the crowd toward the bathroom, expecting her to follow Serena, but she didn't. Although she still looked terribly uncomfortable.

"I guess we'll….find our seats, then," he said awkwardly.

He and Rini made it barely twenty steps through the crowd before his cell phone rang. Rini watched him slide it out of his pocket, glance at the screen, and say, "Hey, we're by Gate Nineteen, do you–"

He broke off.

"Oh. Okay. Well, let us come get you and I'll drive you home–" He broke off again. "Serena, come on." There was a note of desperation in his voice. "Don't–"

Serena must have hung up, for his face closed down, and he lowered the phone.

"She says she's sick and she's going to go home, but we should stay and have fun," he said, rubbing his face and meeting her eyes reluctantly. "This reeks of a set-up. I'm sorry, Rini."

The right thing to say in response was, "It's okay, but Rini's hands were sweating too much. She wished, irrationally, that Buji was there to say something stupid.

"You probably don't want any cotton candy, do you?" Asanuma was eyeing the huge bouquets of pink floss dangling from the vendor booths.

Rini looked at them too and shook her head. She had never had cotton candy, and if these ones had been a different color, maybe she would have tried them. But this cotton candy was the same pink that Asanuma had always dyed her hair in the future, and the memory made her stomach twist even harder.

"Hey." Asanuma's voice reached her ears.

She looked at him and saw that he was looking straight ahead, as though he had noticed the wetness building up in her eyes and was politely not looking at it.

"We can leave if you want," he said quietly, barely audible above the laughter and music and whirring of toys. "I'll take you back to Serena."

"No!" Rini burst out.

Asanuma's eyes flew to her, startled.

"That wasn't why I was upset. I was…looking at the cotton candy," Rini said lamely, feeling very transparent. Did Serena feel like this when she lied? "That's the color…" She stumbled. "…you dye my hair. In the future."

Asanuma seemed to flinch. But his smile quickly flicked back into place. "Oh, yeah, I remember Serena telling me your hair was pink when you first came. Geeze, did I choose that color to tick Darien off or something? It's not even normal!"

Knowing that she shouldn't because it could compromise the future, but knowing also that she _wanted _the future to change, Rini took a deep breath. "It is normal, in the future."

Asanuma's eyes slid to hers.

"Nobody there has hair like people here. Except blond," she said. "Some people still have hair like you and Serena."

"Seriously?" Asanuma stared at her as they climbed up the soda-sticky steps to their seats. "What other colors are there?"

"Green. Like Lita's when her flash-form was taking over." Rini stumbled backward as a stream of older kids scrambled past her.

Asanuma caught her by the jacket, sending a dirty look after the brats.

"Blue." Rini righted herself, starting up the steps again. Surreptitiously, she reached up to hold onto Asanuma's coat as she climbed the next step. "Green. Red. Pink. Some kind of like Helios." She remembered that Asanuma and the other Shittenou had never actually _seen_ Helios. "White hair, I mean. And there's some purple. Really light purple."

"Right here," said Asanuma, putting a gentle hand on her head between her hair buns to stop her and steer her left. They turned into their row, settling down in the middle since everyone had bailed and left the seats on either side of them unoccupied. "So hang on. If everyone else's hair looks like it came out of a bag of Skittles, why is yours brown?"

Rini shook her head. "I don't know. That's why Asanuma dyed it, so no one would notice mine was different."

Asanuma regarded her. For a moment. And another moment.

At last, she said, "What?"

"Huh? Oh." He shook his head. "Sorry, it's just so weird to hear about…well. Me. My future self." He shrugged and looked at the sequin-vested vendors trailing through the crowd with shouts of _Last call! Get your cotton candy! Get your snow cones! Get your light-up sabers!_ "Are you sure you don't want anything?"

Rini shook her head, transferring her eyes to the ring.

The lights dimmed, and colorful spotlights began to swing across the tent. Remixed circus music began to thump through the speakers, pulsing with the light show, as the magicians and clowns streamed into the ring. Asanuma watched Rini watch their opening performances without her face changing once. The only thing that moved were the lights reflected on her eyes in the dimness.

The next act was a man leaping through fire-ringed metal circles. Asanuma looked at the man as he stood perfectly still, inhaling deeply to begin his leap, and then looked at Rini.

The man leapt.

The fire on the rings went out.

The crowd burst into laughter. Rini frowned, turning to look at Asanuma to see if he'd seen.

He gave her a face-splitting grin.

Realization lit Rini's eyes. Her frown gave way to a grin.

"Again?" Asanuma whispered as he let the rings reignite for the man to try once more.

Rini looked back at the ring. "Maybe just one more time."

They passed the rest of the circus like that, Asanuma finding ways to make her giggle and having a great deal of unholy glee himself. By the end of the performances, as they trailed out with the stream of people into the parking lot, he felt like he could take on the world. Serena was definitely right. The future was going to change. They would find a way to change it.

Ice cream, he decided. They needed some ice cream to celebrate this revelatory moment. He looked down. "Rini, let's go for ice cream! Where do you wanna go?"

But Rini wasn't paying attention, he saw. Her eyes were focused on something ahead of them, and when he said her name again without her looking up, he followed her gaze.

She was watching a family that was walking across the parking lot. A father and a mother and a girl, who couldn't be much older than Rini, giggling and gripping both of their hands as they all counted, "One, two, three!" and swung her up into the air.

Asanuma watched Rini watch them. Then he slid his phone back out of his pocket and sent a text to Darien.

_Meet me at the park._

Asanuma had never given the folder back to Mikai. He wasn't sure if the other Shittenou had noticed this fact and just not said anything because he was aware of what thin ice he was treading with Asanuma or if he had just not noticed.

Either way, it was a bad move on Mikai's part. Asanuma slid the folder out of his Subspace pocket as he waited for Darien on the bench near the park's entrance after he had dropped Rini off at Serena's. He knew Darien might not listen to him if Asanuma was the one to try to tell him the truth. They hadn't spoken to each other since Darien got back from the track meet, and even if they _had_ been talking, Rini had been right when she said that Asanuma got so emotional about things that people (namely Darien) didn't listen to him.

But the contents of this folder were facts, hard scientific observations. All those Punnett squares and recessive traits and genotypes and crap. And, furthermore, they were in _Mikai_'s handwriting. Asanuma couldn't think of any time that Darien hadn't listened to Mikai.

This thought should have made him bitter. Maybe it did, somewhere so far down in him that he couldn't feel it. But he couldn't feel anything except how it had felt to watch Rini's face and the pounding in his ears and chest, the thumping _this is it, this is it, this is it._ This could be what changed everything. This could be what changed the future the way Serena had predicted.

Suddenly, a fierce wind tore past Asanuma. Pebbles from the path pounded angrily at his legs, air tore at his eyes. Then, as abruptly as it had began, it stopped.

Gripping the folder to his chest where he'd clutched it convulsively close, he slitted his eyes open.

Darien stood in front of him, slightly crouched. His eyes, ringed by dark circles, were sweeping back and forth across the streetlight-washed path.

"Someone was here." His glance went momentarily to Asanuma, his golden eyes looking like embers in the flickering orange streetlight. "Were you being followed?"

Asanuma glanced through the darkness. Had Mikai realized that he had the folder and come to stop him from giving it to Darien?

The thought made him step immediately to Darien and push the folder into his hands. His eyes swept the darkness instead of meeting Darien's as he commanded, "Read it."

"Right now?" Darien glanced down at the folder reluctantly, as though he wanted to give it back to Asanuma. "I was going to get Rini from Serena."

"_Read_ it." Asanuma took a step back and then broke into a run, heading for the park exit. His presence, he felt instinctively, would only agitate Darien and make him less receptive to the folder's contents.

With some bemusement, Darien watched Asanuma sprint away. His haste didn't make much sense, unless the presence that Darien had sensed following had been part of some prank that he and Mikai or Buji were playing on each other. He wouldn't put it past them, but the aura he had sensed, sharp and chilly like a night wind, hadn't resembled either of theirs.

He stood still for a moment, barely breathing, his eyes transformed to the darkness-piercing ones of an owl and his senses stretched out to see if they could detect the aura again. But he couldn't concentrate. His pulse was suddenly banging hard, throbbing in his ears and at his neck and in his thumb where he held the folder Asanuma had given him.

He wiped a sweaty hand on his pant leg and looked down at it, blinking his owl eyes as the streetlamp above him flickered and died. The binder looked like a homework binder, stuffed with notebook paper and other crumpled sheets, and for a moment, as he set it on the park bench and flipped it open, the idle thought crossed his mind that Asanuma was probably just trying to trick Darien into doing his calculus homework for him, which he might actually be willing to do because he didn't want to go to sleep and face more dreams tonight.

But then Darien's eyes registered the smudged, hand-drawn Punnett squares covering the first page. And the second page and the third and the fourth and fifth, all in Mikai's handwriting. And below them, lists of gametes and genotypes and phenotypes, and hastily scrawled sentences like _R and S both display recessive trait, D could be heterozygous dominant_. The handwriting grew sloppier and more crooked as the pages went on as though Mikai had become more and more excited until, on the final page, below more scrawling and a rough sketch of a pair of hands clasped together as though in prayer, he had written in crooked, all capital letters:

_THE TRAITS FIT! SERENA = MOON PRINCESS!_

The folder fell out of Darien's hands.

Around him, a fierce wind suddenly howled. It tore at the papers in the folder like a wolf tearing at a piece of meat and sent clouds scudding across the half-full moon. The park fell into darkness. The wind died, and when the clouds finally moved past the moon a few minutes later, letting the moonlight spill down onto the park, the man who had stood beside the bench were gone.

All that remained of his presence were several deep gouges in the wood of the bench that looked like they had been made by the claws of a very large wolf.


	33. Chapter 33

**A/N**: Despite what I have said earlier, there are now **five chapters left** after this one. This means that we're finally to the point in the system where things have been built up for so long that some of them may seem anticlimactic (coughlastchapter'srevelationcough). I'm sorry! I promise you guys that I'm doing my best to stay true to the characters without being boring. I am really grateful for all your opinions so far; they have been very, very helpful. Please continue to share your thoughts so that I can continue to make these last chapters as clear and as not-disappointing as possible!

A lot of the plot questions from the last chapter should be answered by the **timeline **below. In response to Dawn of Aurora, who asked if Rini was going to be born now because Asanuma said in Chapter 32 that he would only need "enough for six years," what I meant was that Asanuma only expects to need extra money for the six years that he is taking care of Rini, when he may not be able to hold a full-time job in addition to guarding her. Before that, he expects he will be able to support himself. Sorry for the confusion!

Also, I thought I should inform everyone that there will be **no more Hotaru-Rei scenes** in this season. After much thought, I have decided to defer them either to Season 3 or to a separate fic like Fiore Arc.

Big thank you to Sue – you guys should go to the STC site and check out her Shittenou sketch, it's incredible. And as always, let's bow in supreme gratitude to Jade-sama for her endless help!

**All that having been said**…I think you all know what's coming in this chapter. Please put those pitchforks down?

**Language** and **Gore Warning** for this chapter**.**

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Sailor Moon.

**Timeline** (Chapters 31-32):

212. Having found out that Sailor Moon is the Moon Princess he has been looking for, Diamond ordered Emerald to release youma one after the other to make sure that Sailor Moon comes out to fight – and, thus, to be captured. _However, because Emerald was determined to have Diamond for herself, she made sure that Sailor Moon would not come to any of the youma battles._ She did this by telling Tomoe to make sure his wife, Principal Knight, sent the track team early to their track meet so they would be out of Tokyo when the youma were released. In the meantime, Tomoe had a request of his own concerning the youma…

213. The youma began to attack once the track team was out of Tokyo on Thursday afternoon. They attacked one after another until Saturday, with Asanuma insisting that they shouldn't call Serena and Darien for help. Motoki was frightened to fight, and Rini inadvertently used her powers to force him to dust the youma. He did not realize what she had done.

214. Rei and Hotaru arrived in an American city, where Rei has decided that they will settle down for now.

215. Serena and Darien had a WAFF-y encounter in Darien's hotel room after Serena got locked out of her room in nothing but a towel.

216. By the time Saturday rolled around with no sign of Sailor Moon, Diamond was murderously frustrated with Emerald. The Wiseman, pointing out that the Senshi must have realized the princess's identity has been compromised, convinced Diamond that they must capture Rini in order to lure out Sailor Moon.

217. Darien and Serena won nearly all of their events at the meet. Tension rose between Haruka and Michiru, who has begun to believe that Haruka loves Serena.

218. Serena and Darien began to worry when, as they drove home from Infinity after the meet, no one answered their calls. When they discovered Lita and the Shittenou and found out what had happened, Darien tore into Asanuma for not calling for help. Meanwhile, Rini continued to worry in silence over what she had done to Motoki.

219. Emerald began to plot to kill Sailor Moon without Diamond knowing. Her first attempt came Monday night, when she released a youma and knocked Sailor Moon out before she could dust it. She would have killed her then if not for Haruka, who had been following Serena, using a fierce wind to drive her off. Haruka did not make any effort to save any civilians from the youma.

220. Tomoe had been attempting to contact Senator Hino about Hotaru with no success. The senator has gone into hiding. Tomoe enlisted Emerald's droid, Chiral, and one of the human youma to track him down.

221. Darien had dreams of Endymion's intimate last moments with the Moon Princess in the Silver Millennium. Until a certain point in the dream, he believed the girl in his arms was Serena, but even after he realized that it was the princess, he still wanted her. This desire immensely upset him. It made him fear that Endymion has not been as dormant since Christmas as he had thought.

222. Asanuma discovered the folder of papers that Mikai accidentally stuffed into his backpack when he was talking to Darien about Sailors Mercury, Pluto, and Mars. The papers contained evidence of Mikai's theory that Serena was the Moon Princess.

223. Dr. Ludisae called Darien to ask if he was going to apply to Yale. Darien reflected how choosing to stay in Tokyo with Serena was the first decision he ever made solely of his own volition, not because of Tuxedo Mask, Endymion, or the Moon Princess. He realized that loving Serena was how he knew he was still Darien Shields and not Endymion.

224. When Asanuma confronted Mikai about why he hadn't told Darien his theory, they were interrupted by Motoki. Although Asanuma believed Darien would be happy to find out Serena was the Moon Princess's reincarnation, Motoki worried that Darien would worry that he didn't really love her, that he was only drawn to her because Endymion loved the Moon Princess. Together, he and Mikai convinced Asanuma not to tell Darien Mikai's theory yet.

225. So that Rini could make up with Asanuma, Serena got circus tickets for them. Left behind by Serena so that it was just the two of them, they reconciled. Rini explained to Asanuma that in the future, everyone has colored hair, not dark hair. Only she was different, for some unknown reason, and that was why Future Asanuma dyed her hair.

226. As they walked out of the circus, Asanuma saw Rini wistfully watching a mother and father with their young daughter. He decided that he was going to give Rini the chance to have that family – and that meant telling Darien about Mikai's discovery.

227. Asanuma met Darien at the park, where Darien sensed Haruka's presence (though he did not know it was Haruka) and chased it away. Asanuma gave Darien Mikai's folder of evidence and told him to read it.

228. Darien flipped through the folder, reached the part where Mikai had written, "THE TRAITS FIT! SERENA = MOON PRINCESS." Quickly losing control and slipping into his wolf form, he disappeared to Elysion.

L

**Subject to Change**

Season 2

Chapter Thirty-Three: Countdown to Game Over

L

Even as she lay unconscious on the Sands of Time, Sailor Pluto sensed the tremendous ram of Darien's mind against the block that contained Endymion's memories. His memories of the princess.

With an effort that clenched her jaw so hard one of her teeth cracked, Pluto shoved her shoulder against the block.

The prince's golden aura roared.

Blood trickled from Pluto's nose. A whimper escaped her.

_Not…yet!_

The memory block held.

L

"–and then Asanuma made the fire go out," Rini continued, swinging her legs in Serena's vanity chair as the older girl leaned past her to grab the hairbrush. Her reflection wore a triumphant grin, and Serena's reflection was grinning back at her as she drew the brush through Rini's hair. "Everyone was laughing–"

The hair brush clattered to the floor.

Rini, her attention on Serena's face, saw her lips go white. Her eyes, sparkling and warm just a second ago, suddenly seemed like they were in another galaxy. Dark and distant and unreachable. Even her aura was suddenly cold, a creeping cold that made Rini's fingertips prickle numbly.

She was scared. "Serena?"

Serena's eyes did not focus on her. Her hands moved, her fingers fluttering through the air near Rini's shoulder like she was a blind person trying to find something to hold onto.

Rini reached out, trying to give Serena her hand.

Serena slapped it away.

Then suddenly her eyes were back to this galaxy again: big and blue and gazing apologetically at Rini. But inside her aura, Rini still felt that knob of cold.

"Rini, I'm so sorry." Serena grasped her upper arms, fingers catching at the fabric of her pajamas. "I was – "

Only one person could make Serena act like this. Rini reached out…and couldn't find his aura. "Darien?"

Serena's fingers tightened around her arms. "He's fine. I'm sure he's fine." She was already rising to her feet, but not letting go of Rini. If anything, her grip was tighter. "Just in case, I need you to go Elysion."

"But," Rini began.

"Now, Rini!" Serena's voice came out sharp.

Rini backpedaled even as a flash of remorse lit Serena's eyes. She closed her eyes and concentrated hard, packing her aura into her body to go to Elysion. It was hard, because every molecule of her seemed to be trembling with fear, but after a few seconds, she felt herself fading.

L

Mikai started violently when his door crashed open. Ripping his headset from his ears, he scrambled up from his desk to the dining room doorway.

But Serena burst through it before he reached it.

No, not Serena. Sailor Moon, her eyes wild beneath her tiara, her face as flushed and chest heaving as if she had run there.

"Where is he?"

Mikai's heart rate, which had quickened at her abrupt appearance, sped up even more at her breathless demand. "You mean Darien?"

"Yes!" she all but shouted. Her hair slapped him as she pushed past him to his computer monitors. She grabbed at the mouse, at the keyboard, her eyes flying across the screens, and spun back. "_Where_?"

"Not here," Mikai said stupidly. "Isn't he–I mean–" His mind was coming to an unhappy conclusion. "You can't sense him?"

He didn't need an answer. Never before had he seen Serena act like this, her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides, her pulse so wild that he could see it throbbing in her neck beneath her red choker. Even when she was so upset over Ami and Rei, she hadn't been like this.

"No! He's disappeared!" She swung back to the computer, grabbing the mouse again. "Can't you track him with this? Haven't you – I don't know, planted a microchip in him or something?"

"He's not a dog," said Mikai, surprised both by her accusing him of this and by how much the accusation reminded him of something that Darien would say. Although he had known her for months now, it had continued to confuse him how his high-IQed, no-nonsense friend would be attracted to a cheerful bleeding heart like Serena. It was part of the reason that he had first thought Serena could be the Moon Princess, because it would explain Darien's illogical attraction to her. Now, for the first time, though, he felt like he had caught a glimpse into Darien's relationship with her. Perhaps the two of them weren't as different as he had thought.

But this was not the time for such musings. Darien had disappeared from Serena's senses, which, so far as Mikai had been able to glean from Asanuma and Motoki, was unheard of. They had some sort of semi-telepathic connection that had always been present, even before they discovered each others' identities.

It had always been present…which meant that…

"He's not dead," said Moon, seeing the look on his face. "He's not."

"How can you be sure?"

"It didn't feel like that." She was shaking her head in a way that made him uneasy, like she was just trying to convince herself.

"You've sensed people die before?"

She met his eyes. "Yes." She closed her eyes, hands falling to wave vaguely through the air in front of her. A grimace twisted her face. "It didn't feel like this. This feels like…" Her grimace deepened, her face knotting. "Like he doesn't want me to feel him."

Her hands lowered. Her eyes opened. They were dull, still wild, but the wildness was deadened now by resignation.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I think I bothered you for nothing. I'm very sorry."

She stepped backward, then turned, moving so slowly she might have been sleep-walking. Mikai heard his front door open and then close.

He stretched his senses to the concrete of his front walk and waited until he could feel the pressure of her footsteps slowly crossing the asphalt street.

Then he pressed an autodial button on his headset.

Asanuma answered after only two rings. "Yeah?" His voice, defiant and defensive, as though he was expecting to be chewed out, told Mikai all that he needed to know.

He rubbed his forehead. "You told him."

"Yes." Now Asanuma's voice was apprehensive. "He came to you already? How's he taking it?"

"He didn't come to me. Serena did. Apparently he's cut her off from their mental connection."

Silence filled the other end of the line.

L

" – no. Bujiro, _go_. I am not jesting –"

Rini materialized face-first into a faceful of feathery white wings. She stumbled backward, blinking and spitting them out of her mouth, just in time to see Helios whirling around to look at her, one of his hands tightly gripping Buji's shoulder.

"No. Go. Both of you have to go!" His voice was a cry of frustration. It wasn't loud enough, however, to cover the faint panting coming from a dozen feet behind him, beneath the grove of trees that Rini had managed to grow in one of her last training sessions. She tried to peer over Helios's shoulder, already knowing what she would see, but he blocked her, lifting his wings to stretch out and cover the crouched humanoid shape.

"Back," he said in the firmest voice she had ever heard him use. "Both of you must go back."

"But Darien!" Buji protested.

Rini wasn't listening to either of them. She knew the feeling, now, of transforming without being able to stop, the feeling of your human self and memories spinning away as inevitably as Asanuma's soul had spun away from her when she tried to hold it to his body. She wanted to feel angry at Darien for coming here and cutting Serena off, for scaring Serena so badly. But she couldn't. She just felt bad for him. Scared for him. Wanted to help him.

Helios, always more on his guard for Buji to disobey than for Rini, took his attention from Rini for a moment to glare Buji down again. While he was thus distracted, Rini darted under his feathery wing and to Darien, her loose hair streaming behind her.

He didn't look as bad as he had the other time that she had seen him lose control, the night he found out that he was her father. He was still mostly human-shaped, crouched beside the little pond that he and Rini had summoned between the trees so that Buji could practice his new Shittenou powers. She knelt beside him. Wolfish black fur dusted the backs of his hands, extending down fingers that had claw-like nails and too-large knuckles. One of his hands dug deep furrows into the sandy soil beside the pond. The other clenched something inside it, balled up on his knee. Although his head was down, his chin grinding against his collarbone, she could see his blurred reflection in the trembling pool: his eyes glowing hotly and long canine teeth curving over his lower lip.

From behind her came a shout of "Rini-hime!" but Darien was lifting his head. He was panting slightly, whether from the effort of trying to stay as human as possible or from some wolf instinct, Rini didn't know.

His eyes met hers. They were round and yellow-gold, the pupils large enough to swallow her, and so searching that meeting them head-on made her eyes water. She remembered how it had felt when he looked at her after finding out that she was his daughter. It had been like he was looking straight into her, right down to her DNA. Now, she felt the same way, except instead of hope burning behind his eyes, there seemed to be the opposite emotion: whatever he was looking for, he did _not_ want to find.

He could not bear to find.

The paper in his hand made a crumpling noise as his grip tightened. His expression had changed again, and he looked almost like he wanted to swipe out at her with one of his clawed hands. Rini remembered how Serena had slapped her away before remembering who she was. She bit her lip.

Darien's shoulders slumped. In a voice that was barely a growl, he rasped, "Go."

Rini swallowed. "Darien – "

"Rini." His voice cracked, with weariness or emotion, she didn't know, but she fell silent. "Please. Go back."

"We can help you change back," she said. "Serena, she can – "

His face went still and hard. Rini's words died in her throat.

She took a step back. Then she turned and, forcing herself not to run, walked back to where Buji and Helios stood, watching. Her hand was in Buji's cold one, then, whether she'd grabbed his or he'd grabbed hers she didn't know, and then they were in Serena's room.

Buji looked at her, then over at Serena where she was sitting on her bed. Without saying anything, he teleported away. Rini barely noticed. She was watching Serena, who was looking back at her with her scarred face drawn.

Rini fisted her sweaty hands in the fabric of her nightgown. "He's okay."

There was no slumping of relief. No exhaled "Thank goodness!" and seizing of Rini in a tight hug. Serena only nodded, her face tight. Rini, not knowing what else to do, crept around the bed and under her blankets. She didn't pull them up to her chin, half hoping for Serena to sigh and come tuck her in.

She didn't.

The snow globe that Asanuma had given her was still under her pillow, where she had kept it ever since Christmas. Rini pulled it out from under her pillow without making a sound and pressed her cheek against it.

It seemed like years ago that she had been laughing with Asanuma at the circus, looking forward to telling Serena about all the things she had seen.

L

Lita glanced out the frost-rimed windows of her apartment lobby into the street. A silver Porsche had just pulled up, braking so abruptly that slush sprayed onto the sidewalk. Stupid rich people with their expensive cars thinking they could do whatever they wanted. What if she'd been standing out there waiting, huh? That slush would've gotten all over her!

She looked back at the clock above the night manager's desk. Shields was late. Had there been a youma attack she didn't know about? But attacking on a Monday morning was low even for a bunch of scumbags like the Black Moon.

She should really get a cell phone, she decided. This whole being left out of the loop thing was too much to deal with –

"Lita!"

She turned. The driver's window of the Porsche was pulled down. Asanuma's unmistakable blond head was sticking out of it.

_Asanuma_ was the inconsiderate driver? Go figure. Rich jerk.

She grabbed her bag and hurried outside. The back door of the Porsche opened, and she could see Toki inside.

Lita slid in, giving Motoki a smile of thanks as she slammed the door behind her and saw that, next to Asanuma in the front, Serena was sitting in the passenger seat.

She frowned. "Where's Shields?"

Toki's hand touched her arm. She turned to see him shaking his head ever-so-slightly at her.

She looked back at Asanuma, who was pulling out into traffic.

"I think he ate some bad fish," said the blonde. "He told me I should drive today."

Serena hadn't said anything yet. Lita scooted forward in her seat, ignoring Toki's attempts to push the seatbelt at her. "Serena?"

Serena glanced over her shoulder with a bright smile. Too bright. Then her eyes widened. "Lita! Seatbelt!"

Lita grumbled and settled back, taking the seatbelt from Motoki. His hand brushed hers, warm and making her heart skip a beat. Her eyes swung up to his, taking in the funny little half-smile he gave her. She wanted to lean forward and smooth a kiss to his cheek where she could see he had missed a spot shaving. But he pulled away, and she didn't.

What she _did_ do was corner Serena once they had gotten to school and the guys had set off for their classes.

"Is Darien really sick?" she asked in a low voice as they climbed the stairs. "Or did you guys have another fight?"

Serena looked up at her. Her bright smile had been replaced by dark-smudged eyes and a mouth that turned down tiredly at the corners, pulling at her scars. "I think he found out."

"Found out…" Lita trailed off expectantly.

"What I did." Serena was wringing her hands. "With Endymion. In the Silver Millennium."

Lita's lips compressed. If Darien had found out about the Lanai-lie and _believed_ it, he was a fifty times bigger douche than she had ever accused him of being. He might as well just have believed Luna a year ago when she said Serena was a traitor if he was just going to believe this bull crap now.

"He's stupid if he believes whatever he heard," she declared aloud. "There's no way in hell it's true."

Serena's pained expression did not relax at all. "He wouldn't have believed it if he just heard it. I think he must have remembered it. Through Endymion's flash-form."

Lita stared at her. As Serena told her, her voice low and fast, about how Darien's aura had pulled away from her and ignored all her attempts to call him and communicate through the rope, she felt uncertainty began to creep through her. Lanai was full of bullshit, she had to be full of bullshit, Serena would never seduce anyone…but Serena looked so damn convinced.

No. Lita shook away her doubt, tossing her head. "Look, maybe something just happened to him. Like that time he ended up in the hospital when he lost control of his powers."

"No." Serena was shaking her head too. "He was in Elysion. Rini saw him. She said he's fine. And you saw how Numa and Toki were acting in the car this morning. They know something."

"Of course they do," said Lita grimly.

The bell rang. Serena took a deep breath and put a hand to her eyes. Her other hand lifted unconsciously to press against the star-shaped locket hanging just beneath her collar, and Lita grimaced to think that even when Darien had Serena an inch from tears, it was his present that she clutched for comfort.

After a moment, Serena took a deep breath and let her hands fall to her sides. "Sorry. I didn't mean to make you late. Let's go."

Lita allowed herself to be pulled up the stairs toward their first class. But as Serena squeezed her hand and sent a grateful, though weak, smile up at her, her mind was racing in the opposite direction.

L

Geeze, these Infinity classes were hard. Rubbing his face, Motoki joined the students streaming out of the classroom. He felt a bristly patch on his face he must have missed while he was shaving that morning. Actually, he could feel several such patches. He'd been so distracted by worrying about Darien that he hadn't done the neatest shaving job.

"Hey." A hand grabbed his arm, pushing him out of the jumble of students.

Motoki looked up. Lita stood in front of him, still gripping his arm. She stared him down, her eyes hard and accusing. She had never turned that gaze on him, except when her flash-form was taking over. But that wasn't what was happening, he knew. This wasn't Jupiter. This was all Lita.

"What aren't you telling us about Darien?" Her voice was soft and close to his ear, the way it had been all the times they kissed, when they were still together. But the context was completely different now; he could feel her threatening aura crackling under the surface, exciting electrons to his own skin, standing up the hairs there.

He closed his eyes. "I think you should talk to Asanuma."

"I already talked to Asanuma. He's not talking."

Motoki opened his eyes. For the first time, he became aware of a faint scent of burnt cloth. Looking down at Lita's hand still gripping his arm, he saw that the cuff of her long uniform sleeve was singed as though by fire.

His eyes went back up to hers, green and deep.

He had expected her to come to him, the weakest link, first. But Lita had never seen him like that, had she? She had trusted him to guard Rini even when his best friend hadn't trusted him to be able to do it. Lita had never seen him as the weakest link, had never made him feel inferior except when she protected him because he had failed to protect himself.

He wanted her back.

He wanted her to run far away and not to worry about him anymore.

He put his mouth close to her ear. "I'm sorry, Lita. It's not my secret to tell."

Lita stared back at him, then away. She sighed and started walking. He followed her, and together, they made their way to the cafeteria. At the lunch table, Serena was leaning toward Asanuma, tipping ice cubes out of her glass and putting them in a wad of napkins to hold to his face. Motoki realized with widening eyes that Asanuma's face was bruised, the skin around his left eye turning purple.

As he and Lita slid into chairs at the table, Serena glanced up, her eyes going to Lita, but she did not give Lita the reproachful look she usually did when Lita was being a bit of a bully. She only smiled, briefly, a little sadly, at both of them.

Motoki wondered if Mikai could possibly be right. Why would Darien be reacting the way that he was if he didn't think that Serena really could be the princess?

Asanuma shifted the makeshift compress over his eye. "Did you break, Toki?"

"No," Lita answered for him.

"Then how come you didn't give him a knuckle sandwich, too?" Asanuma's face was petulant, his voice teasing, as though Lita hadn't just given him a black eye. "Because he's your ex and you're still secretly in love with him?"

Although they had been friends for years now, Motoki still didn't know if Asanuma said the things he did intentionally, to get a rise out of people, or if these things just popped out uncontrollably. Whatever the reason was, he really wished that Asanuma would just keep his fat mouth shut for once.

The blonde boy lifted the compress from his eye to poke at the bruise, continuing, "I would have asked you out, too, if I'd known it would save me from this."

Motoki, watching Serena because he didn't know what he might do if he looked at Lita, saw her laugh and then bite her lip.

"Alright. Enough of the funny business." Lita put her hands flat on the table, forcing them all to look at her. "I just need to know one thing. Keep your stupid Darien-secret, whatever, I don't give a damn. But I need to know that you're not going to try anything on Serena."

"Try anything?" Asanuma echoed. "What, like Sailor Venus? Get a grip, Lita." His tone, suddenly hard and cold, suggested that Lita had a very low IQ. "We trust Serena. Nothing's going to change that."

Lita stared back at him with eyes that were as cold and hard as his voice. "Swear it."

"Bloody hell, woman!" Asanuma sighed dramatically. "I swear! Cross my heart, hope to cry when Lita stabs me in the thigh! Okay?"

Lita's mouth twitched. She compensated by narrowing her eyes at Asanuma and then looked at Motoki, the almost-smile fading from her face. "Motoki?"

He wanted to make her smile the way Asanuma had nearly managed to. But he didn't know how. So he just said honestly, "I swear."

L

Despite mentally warning herself not to get her hopes up, Serena had hoped that Darien might be unwilling to risk Coach Etoukou's wrath and come to gym class. Once she was dressed in her track shorts and t-shirt, she hurried out of the locker room, nearly tripping over her unbraided hair in her haste to see if he had come.

He hadn't. Coach noticed this as quickly as Serena did, and with an expression that was more angry than crestfallen.

"Where the heck is Shields?" he demanded, peering around her as though Darien would pop out from behind her. "Tsukino, where is he?"

"I think he's…sick," lied Serena.

"Sick? This close to nationals? Sei Le, gimme that phone!" Coach grabbed for Sei Le's ever-present cell phone.

In a movement almost too fast for even Serena to follow, the slender, pony-tailed boy ducked under Coach's grasp, flipping the beefy man over his shoulder.

They all stared, wide-eyed, at Coach on his back on the floor and at Sei Le, gripping his phone like a bomb that might explode if anyone but him touched it.

"Wow," said Kobayashi. "You should be on the judo team."

Sei Le looked back at them all. His eyes fell on Serena, as though he was pinpointing her as the reason his cell phone was nearly snatched away. His pale eyes narrowed.

Haruka stepped between them, leaning over Coach Etoukou. "Need some help getting up, Coach?"

"No," wheezed Coach, getting up. "I need Shields. Has he gone to the doctor, Tsukino?"

Serena faltered. "Um…"

"Go call him and tell him I'm sending Dr. Tomoe to check up on him."

Serena froze, her eyes flying to Coach's. "Who?"

"Dr. Tomoe. Principal Knight's husband." Coach rubbed his back, groaning. "She said I can call him if there's ever an emergency with one of my athletes."

Serena was a bit shell-shocked. Mrs. Knight was married to _Dr. Tomoe? _She managed to say, "I…don't think this is an emergency…"

Coach pinned her on a glare. "Then what is it?"

Serena lowered her eyes. Darien hated Dr. Tomoe. She would have tried to keep the creepy doctor away from Darien no matter what, but now, knowing that he might know how she had betrayed him, it seemed doubly important that she do so.

She met Coach's expectant eyes. "We had a fight."

"…" Coach blinked. "So Shields decided to stay home and sulk? I thought that was the girl's job."

She heard Kobayashi snort. Beside her, Haruka was watching her closely. Serena forced her arms to stay at her sides instead of hugging them protectively around herself.

Coach rubbed his forehead beneath his baseball cap. "Good grief, Tsukino. Am I going to have to send the two of you to Miss Lanai for couples counseling again? I can't take all this drama."

Sei Le snorted. Coach looked at him and glared.

"Ten laps," he said dangerously. "ALL of you."

Saori and Kobayashi were the first to start off, Saori with a roll of her eyes. Sei Le followed after, sending a last unflattering glance back at Serena and Coach.

Haruka tugged Serena after them. "C'mon, Muffin Head. I'll braid your hair for you."

Serena shook her head. "I'm fine, Haruka-nii. Thank you, though."

"Oh, c'mon, Muffinhead." Haruka's voice was soft, the expression on his face tender. His hand found hers, fingers sneaking into hers. More quietly, he said, "You're breaking my heart with that face."

Serena forced a smile and forced her fingers, as gently as she could, out of his. She followed everyone else onto the track, feeling her unbraided ponytails slapping her legs.

L

That night, according to the schedule they had been following the past few weeks, Rini was supposed to train with Serena. The little girl had already mastered channeling her power through the crystal sword into a beam, and Serena had decided to try to teach her how to release it in a more diffuse burst from all along the flat of the blade instead of only in a concentrated beam from the tip. It was about the only thing she had been looking forward to all day.

But when she got to the elementary school that afternoon to pick Rini up, Rini was shifting from foot to foot and Buji, who was supposed to train with Darien, was already gone.

The little girl did not reach up to take Serena's hand the way she had recently begun to do when they set off from the schoolyard. She wriggled her mittened hands into her jacket pockets instead and said, "I think I should go to Elysion to train today."

Serena's legs almost fell to a stop. She caught them just in time to keep herself from stumbling.

"You do," she said, not sure if her words were a question. Then, as Rini began to nod: "Of course. Of course, why not? Umm – here, do you want me to take your backpack? Oh, right, you need to come home first so Mom doesn't ask questions, I forgot – " She shook her head at herself, smiling bashfully and brightly, and didn't stop smiling until she was in her bedroom and Rini was gone to Elysion, only her little body relaxing peacefully in her nest of blankets as though napping.

Only then did the smile drop from Serena's face. She lowered herself onto her bed, buried her head in her pillow, and let out a muffled shriek. She had been looking forward so much to being with Rini today, when everything else had gone so wrong. Why hadn't she just said, _No, you can't train in Elysion today, you're supposed to train with me_?

"Don't be stupid," she mumbled at herself, rolling over to face the ceiling. It wasn't like she could have said, "No, Rini, you can't go train with your dad today." She had no right to decide when Rini could and couldn't spend time with her father. She had no right to _anything_.

And wasn't she the one, all this time, who had wanted Rini and Darien to spend more time together?

Serena tried to laugh at herself, failed, and rolled back onto her stomach, burying her face in her pillow.

L

In his crystal ball, the Wiseman watched Emerald at her work. It was not in him to feel a human emotion like disgust, but he did feel it, something like the contemptuous affection that the leader of a dog-fighting ring might have for one of his dogs, as he watched the idiotic, lust-stricken woman who fancied herself so powerful she could kill the Moon Princess.

Fool.

Even without his interference, Emerald wouldn't have been able to touch Serenity, not even in the vulnerable form that she was now as Sailor Moon. The Wiseman had taken no chances, of course, watching Emerald's every move whether she was plotting alone in her void or with the Terran scientist, and carefully screening from her mind any plan clever enough to actually present a threat to the princess. He would not have her sending a youma to the Tsukino house to kill the princess while she slept – he dared not risk Diamond noticing it and finding out who the princess was.

The Wiseman would not allow the princess to be had by Diamond, and nor would he allow her to be killed, for all that it would remove the last threat to Chaos's rule. Dead, Serenity would be unable to bear Endymion's child, the child powerful enough to aid Chaos in reigning over all space and time. Chaos was scarcely as interested in the child as it was in Serenity herself, but the Wiseman was its logical general, the one who chivvied it into making the reasonable decisions the same way that Sapphire did to Prince Diamond, and he knew that Serenity would be nowhere near as important in the long run as the child would. If they were compared to birthday presents, Serenity was the toy Chaos wanted to play with that end up being left broken on the floor; the child was the boring savings bond that would accumulate and accumulate and be the more appreciated gift once she came to fruition.

Ironic that, in order to ensure she exist at all, the Wiseman was having to cease his attempts to find the little princess so that he could keep an eye on Emerald. Disgust twisted his insubstantial face beneath the cowl of his hood. Emerald's antics were distracting him from keeping an eye on Diamond, who had been conspicuously absent lately.

But he was not greatly worried. Sapphire dogged Diamond's footsteps, and he was as desperate to keep his brother away from the Moon Princess as Emerald was. Wiseman did not have to worry about Diamond finding her any time soon.

The Chaos minion chuckled darkly to himself. How deliciously ironic that Sapphire, who the only Black Moon member who hated the Wiseman, was the one who was proving to be the most helpful to the Wiseman's plans.

L

Asanuma drove them all again on Tuesday morning. If that hadn't been enough to tip Serena off that Darien was still angry with her, the way that Asanuma and Motoki tried to insist that she sit in the passenger seat, as though the extra leg space would somehow magically distract her from thinking about Darien, would have. At last, she snapped that if Motoki and his daddy-long-legs didn't sit in the front seat, she would walk to school. Motoki immediately complied, his expression like that of a puppy with its tail between its legs, and Asanuma slid behind the wheel with an expression that wasn't much better. Serena felt immediately horrible for being so crabby when they were only trying to make her feel better.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. Then, realizing that she had probably only been heard by Lita, who was sitting next to her, she said more loudly, "I'm sorry, you guys. I shouldn't have jumped down your throats."

"It's okay," said Asanuma, glancing in the rearview mirror and looking pointedly at Lita. "We're used to it."

"I don't doubt _you_ deserved a good throat-jumping," Lita said, raising an eyebrow.

Asanuma's eyes slid away guiltily. He didn't even try to make a dirty joke about alternate meanings of throat-jumping. Lita's eyes narrowed even more suspiciously.

"I think we're all pretty tense right now," said Motoki, gracing Serena with one of his understanding smiles. "A good sugar rush would probably help. I wish I still kept sodas in my locker."

Lita leaned forward. "We could stop for coffees. There's a drive-through place coming up on the right that's not half-bad."

"That sounds great! I could really use some coffee," Serena said immediately, eager to make up for snapping at them.

Except they were all very aware of her dislike of coffee. "They have hot chocolate, too," said Motoki, who had been to the shop with Lita before they broke up.

"Oh? They have that?" Serena deflated with relief in what she thought was a subtle way. "Well, that sounds good, too. Maybe I'll have some of that instead."

They pulled into Infinity's parking lot fifteen minutes later, rushing to grab up their bags without spilling their drinks, as their detour had resulted in them getting to school perhaps a little later than they had planned. Serena, juggling her backpack, her gym bag, and her coffee in her arms and still laughing at Motoki's story about the time he put mayonnaise on top of Asanuma's frappucino instead of whipped cream, tried to shut the car door behind her and squeaked as she overbalanced and tipped sideways.

Her hip hit metal. Her hot chocolate splashed over the rim of its Styrofoam cup and spattered across a red Mustang's hood.

Her throat seized up. She pushed herself away from it and followed its sleek lines to the familiar driver's window, the spotless interior barely visible through the darkly tinted windows, and, in the backseat, the tube of strawberry-flavored lip balm that must have fallen out of her bag when he was driving her back from the meet.

"He's here?" Lita stood behind her, a solid, comforting presence. She gently placed herself between Serena and the car, leaning down to peer through the tinted driver's window. "The car's empty. He's already inside."

"Thanks, Captain Obvious," Asanuma said sarcastically, but he was staring as hard at the car as Lita was. It was obvious from his expression and Motoki's that Darien hadn't told either of them he would be back at school today. His eyes narrowed at the late bell rang. "Let's go."

Lita headed after him. Motoki and Serena hung back, looking at the large brown puddle on the hood of Darien's car. "Shouldn't we clean this up?"

"Nah," called Lita back. "Shields can consider it a welcome-back present."

L

Serena's morning classes were torture. Had they not seen Darien's car in the garage, she never would have known he was at school – or even anywhere at all – for she still could not sense him through the rope. He had cut off the bond entirely. Which he would only have done if he was incredibly, unbearably angry to a degree that he had never been before.

If someone had asked her before now what she thought Darien would have done if he was angry with her, she would have said that he would have kept a closer hold on the rope so that he could keep a closer eye on her. She could still remember the time that she had gone to see Rei, Ami, and Luna at the temple when he had expressly warned her not to, and had ended up being attacked by Malachite. When Darien had come as Tuxedo Mask, he had been fiercely angry with her. She could still remember the exquisite, icy fury of his voice in her ear that day.

But his ignoring of her now was nothing like that. It was nothing like anything she had expected, and that was how she knew that it was an entirely different level of anger. Maybe not just anger – maybe disgust. Maybe hatred.

She had no idea what she would say when she saw him. The classes passed in a blur, as though she was anticipating a difficult and very important exam, as she tried to figure out feverishly what she _should_ say.

Should she come completely clean to him, explain why she hadn't told him about their past? Would it make any difference? Humiliation was not a very virtuous reason to keep such a large piece of information about his past from him. It might only make him angrier. And fear of humiliation didn't explain why she had acted so outrageously intimately with him at the track meet when she had known that she had already seduced him with disastrous consequences before.

Lunch came too soon. Serena followed the rest of her classmates toward the cafeteria, her stomach churning with anxiety, then chickened out at the last second and ducked into a bathroom. There, she took her time washing her hands and scrubbing at her face and convincing herself that she needed to go to the lunchroom and _not_ flee the school premises and possibly Tokyo or even the whole planet. Finally she squeezed her eyes shut and ran into the cafeteria, the equivalent of ripping off a band-aid.

And Darien was sitting right there at the lunch table, eating with the others.

She made her way toward them, concentrating so hard on each step that only when she reached the table and slid into the chair that Lita and Asanuma had left between them for her did she realize that she had forgotten to get any food.

The tension at the table was so thick that no one seemed to notice this fact. Or if they did, they didn't point it out. Not even Darien, who would have teased, "Your forgetfulness usually doesn't extend to food, Odango" on a good day or grunted, "You better be planning to eat something" on a stressful one. Today, Darien only glanced up from the textbook he had open beside his plate, met her eyes without a flicker of reaction, and then returned his attention to his book.

"So," said Lita, breaking the silence that had dominated the table even before Serena had sat down. "Long time no see, Shields. What went down?"

Darien considered a ligand diagram in the textbook, underlining several words in its caption. "I overexerted myself this past week. I reached the snapping point while I was in Elysion and fell asleep for quite a while."

"Quite a while," repeated Lita flatly. It had been two days.

"Yes," said Darien. "I believe you all slept for about that long last weekend after the youma attacks to which you failed to invite Serena and myself."

Serena's pulse gave a little kick as he said her name. She wasn't sure exactly what he had expected, but it didn't include him saying her name so casually, as though he hadn't cut her off from the rope and ignored her for the past several days. It seemed so impersonal that it made her think of the days when she had first known him, before they were well-acquainted enough to bicker with each other, and he only spoke to her with distant courtesy when they encountered each other at school or in the arcade, calling her Tsukino instead of by her first name.

That wasn't the only thing similar to those days, she realized, taking in the way that Lita, Asanuma, and Motoki were clustered around her, leaving Darien isolated on the other side of the table with an empty chair across from and on either side of him. With that and with his textbook out next to his food, Serena had the horrible sense of zooming backward years in time while her body, scarred, and her pulse racing with guilt, stayed the same. It was like the old days back in the arcade, when she was an eighth-grader messing around and laughing with Motoki and Asanuma while that poor black-haired kid whose name she didn't really know sat alone in the corner, doing his homework while he ate.

She bit her lip.

"Hang on, Serena, did you forget to grab lunch?" Lita was looking at her now, her eyes as kind and protective as they had been hard and accusing when she was looking at Darien. She pushed her tray of roast beef and mashed potatoes in front of Serena. "Have this. I've got muffins stashed in my locker."

"Thanks, but I'm good, Lita." Serena smiled. Her stomach was churning too nervously for her to be hungry. She could feel Darien _watching_ her in that multi-sensed way he had, the same way that she had always been able to feel when his attention was focused on her, even when he was blind. For all that his pen was moving across the paper, working out equations that she couldn't begin to understand, his focus was on her. But it wasn't the shivery, possessive, you're-hiding-something-and-I'm-going-to-find-out-what-it-is vibe that she had felt from him so many times. It was impersonal, and dangerous. It was the same way he looked at Miss Lanai and Dr. Tomoe.

As though he sensed her thoughts, he glanced up at her. "By the way," he said, "I know it was your turn to work with Rini last night, but we needed to finish some concentration exercises. You won't mind if I steal her again tonight, will you?"

It didn't sound much like a question. It was too perfunctory, as though asking her was just a formality and her response didn't actually matter.

Which, of course, it didn't.

Serena mumbled something accommodating along the lines of _no, I don't mind,_ and concentrated on mixing Lita's mashed potatoes with her fork for the rest of lunch as the others made stilted conversation and Darien worked on his homework and watched her.

L

"For God's sake, Shields! If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're afraid to touch Tsukino!"

It was Wednesday, and Coach Etoukou was chewing Darien and Serena out for adding ten seconds to their mixed-relay time. Kobayashi and Saori had never been able to beat them before, but during today's practice, they had already beaten them three times.

"My apologies, Coach Etoukou," Darien said.

"I don't care about your apologies," Coach retorted. "I've gotten enough of those from you today. What I want are some results. None of this mincing when it's time to hand off the baton like you'll bust into flame if your hand touches Tsukino's!"

Serena herself felt about as though she was going to burst into flame, she was so uncomfortable. Like Coach, she had noticed that Darien didn't seem to want to touch her. It hurt.

But it didn't hurt quite as much as the impersonal tone Darien used when he glanced at her and said formally, "I apologize, Serena. Please continue to bear with my clumsiness."

He might as well have been talking to Saori, for all the familiarity he showed. And he had acted like this all day, and the day before as well. It was as though they really had gone back to the days before they knew each other as anything more than acquaintances. For all that he was still calling her by her first name, he spoke with the same cordial distance he had used back when he had only addressed her as Tsukino.

It made her feel as young and clumsy as she had always felt back then. But at least then, she hadn't had any reason to pay much attention to the dark-haired high schooler who happened to be friends with her Toki-nii-san. Now, she was wretchedly aware of him and of every pretty Infinity girl who slowed down to talk to him in the parking garage or the lunchroom, twirling their hair, smiling coyly, leaning forward to ask him homework questions in silky voices. She was wretchedly aware of how he leaned toward them to answer in a low voice, of the way he watched them with an intensity like he was trying to figure them out. An intensity that she was used to having directed at her and only her.

An intensity that he didn't seem to direct at her anymore, after lunch yesterday had finished.

At first, even though she felt hurt by how Darien was ignoring her, she felt relieved that he had chosen to ignore her instead of to blowing up at her and forcing her to own up to the things she had done in the Silver Millennium. But relief could only last so long. As Wednesday melted into Thursday and Thursday into Friday, Serena began to resent him for not confronting her. If he would acknowledge what he had found out about her seduction – for Serena remained certain that that was the reason for his behavior – then at least she could tell him why she had chosen not to tell him about it, even if her own reason was her own selfishness. But he didn't bring it up, as though he didn't need to ask her why she hadn't told him. As though he already knew, as though he wasn't surprised that she had done such a thing and then lied to him about it.

As though she had always been that kind of dishonest person in his eyes.

The shame of that thought was the only thing that kept Serena from bursting out and yanking him aside to tell him that she was sorry, that she had been wrong not to tell him, that she would never do anything like it again, she would never even come within a foot of him again if he didn't want her to, but please, just _talk_ to her, let them be friends like they used to be!

Because how could he want to be friends again with someone he had always seen as that sort of untrustworthy person?

So she said nothing. She cringed and stayed quiet and pretended not to be bothered by the girls he spoke in low voices to and didn't speak to him unless he spoke to her first. She could see Lita chafing against the sheer chauvinism of it, and Asanuma snarling under his breath every time a girl came to their lunch table to talk to Darien, and it comforted her, more than it should have, that they were on her side. For a quiet voice inside her said that it had been her past self that had sinned, and she would never hold Endymion's sins against Darien, and she did not deserve for Darien to treat her like _this_.

But it was a very quiet voice.

The only thing that brought Serena close to acting on that voice and lashing out was the increasing amount of time that Rini spent in Elysion. Not a night went by all week that she didn't go. Serena barely saw her all week except once, on Thursday night when she got home from track practice early enough to eat dinner with her family. Even then, as soon as Rini finished her chore of cleaning off the table, she darted upstairs to go to Elysion to train with Darien.

Serena, in the midst of helping her mother dry dishes, said hastily, "Mom, I'll be right back," and rushed upstairs. She burst into the room just as Rini was closing her eyes to vanish. "Rini!"

Rini paused, opening her eyes. The expression on her face was simultaneously guilty and defensive. "Yes?"

"You're going to Elysion?" Serena said. Darien hadn't bothered to tell her when Rini was coming to Elysion since that first day, and the first time she had come back to find Rini's empty bed, her heart had nearly stopped.

Rini nodded, once, sharply, as though she was expecting Serena to say she couldn't.

"I'm not going to stop you," Serena said wearily. "I just – could you leave some sort of sign for me when you go, so I know where you are?" A thought hit her and she dropped to her elbows and knees, scrabbling around under her bed. A minute later, she emerged, holding up a dusty plastic unicorn doll that she gotten for her birthday with a princess Barbie when she was seven. "Like this. When you go, you can just stand this on the nightstand. Please? That way I'll know you've gone to Elysion."

Rini nodded again. "I will." She took the glittery pink unicorn from Serena, stood it up on the nightstand, and disappeared, body and all, to Elysion.

"I'm glad we finally got to talk," Serena mumbled, her voice a mixture of sarcasm and wistfulness. Rini had been so impatient to get to Elysion, it was clear that she didn't miss Serena the way Serena had missed her all week. She bit her lip and went back downstairs to finish helping with the dishes.

If Serena had been able to read Rini's mind, she would have realized that Rini was going to Elysion because she felt that the rift between Serena and Darien must somehow be her fault. She blamed herself for Darien's sudden coldness. And she thought that if she could just distract him enough, spend enough time with him, and make him proud enough of her progress in training, he would be placated and forget to be angry with Serena.

But Serena couldn't read Rini's mind. She didn't understand Rini's reasons for leaving every night. She only saw Rini pulling further and further away from her. And with it, she saw that vision she had always feared, of Darien and the Senshi glaring down at her from a rooftop with the shadowy princess in their midst, coming true.

L

Tomoe answered his phone on the first ring. "Where?"

Chiral glanced around them at the plush bungalow room, then at the slavering youma-dog. "It would take you three days to get here. I'll come get you.

"Don't move," he told the man pinned under the dog, as if he could. Then he opened a void and stepped into it.

A moment later, he stepped out of it again, this time with Dr. Tomoe and Emerald behind him. Chiral's mistress must have been with the doctor when Chiral called and followed to see what was going on. She had her fan in front of her face, watching with puzzled interest in her eyes.

Tomoe smiled humorlessly, going over to where the dog snarled and slavered over the struggling man.

"Senator Hino."

The dark-haired man glared poison up at Tomoe, but his bravado didn't extend past his expression. His whole body was trembling, his chest jerking with sob-like gasps as he gasped and tried to shove the youma-dog off of him. Sweat poured down his face, mixed with flecks of the beast's dripping saliva.

When he spoke, fear made his voice hoarse. "What do you want with me?"

Tomoe glanced coolly over his shoulder. His eyes took in the crushed cell phone lying on the floor and, in the doorway, the motionless bodies of the two suited men that had been guarding Hino's door before being dealt with by Chiral.

"I don't want anything with you," Tomoe said, emphasizing the last two words with disdain. "What I want is my daughter."

"That's too bad," Hino panted. His forehead glistened with sweat and saliva. "I don't have her."

"Tomoe." Mistress's sharp voice rang out as she took a step forward. She had lowered her fan to her side and her green brows were drawn together in displeasure. "What is the meaning of all this? We have more important things to be doing than terrorizing useless humans – "

Tomoe whirled. Behind him, the youma dog snarled and lashed its tail, snapping its teeth at Emerald. "You will be silent," he said lowly, "or there will be very unenjoyable consequences."

Fear and fury sprang into Mistress's pheromones. Chiral noted them unhappily, ashamed that his mistress was frightened by a mere Terran. He watched her draw immediately closer to Tomoe, trying to placate him in the only way she knew how: seductively, her fingertips brushing down his chest. "Tomoe, you know I meant no harm…"

The scientist swept her away from him with one arm. His eyes were back on Hino. "Explain," he said flatly.

Hino's bloodshot eyes flicked to the youma atop him and then past it to where Chiral and Emerald stood. He rasped, "Considering your company, I would have thought you already knew."

Tomoe's eyes slid to Chiral's. Suspicion glinted inside them, scalpel-sharp. Chiral stared back flatly, unimpressed. He may frighten Mistress, but he did not frighten Chiral.

His voice even softer and more dangerous than before, Tomoe said, "Explain."

Something changed in Hino's face. A shift in his eyes, in the tense expression on his face? Chiral was not well-enough acquainted with Terran facial cues to identify exactly what. But the Terran's eyelids fell shut, and he said, "No."

Tomoe's leg lashed out. It dug into the youma dog's head, forcing its slavering mouth down closer to Hino's face.

He leaned down, not letting up any pressure on the dog's head. "You think that I cannot do anything further to you, Senator. But you are wrong. You have lost my daughter while she was under your care, and there is nothing that I will not do to you to recover her." He paused, scrutinizing Hino's closed eyes for one more moment, then removed his foot from the whining youma dog's head and took a step back.

"Chiral," he said, reaching into his coat pocket and withdrawing something small. "Hold the senator down, if you please."

His eyes flicking to his mistress and then to the small syringe that Tomoe was uncapping, Chiral crouched down and braced one across Hino's collarbone and shredded dress shirt, the other atop his forehead, pinning him securely to the floor. Hino sucked in a gasp and began to thrash, but the youma dog snarled and dug its claws in, and Chiral's hold did not waver.

Tomoe crouched down beside them. "This shouldn't take more than three injections," he said, and slid the needle into Hino's carotid artery at a near thirty-degree angle. Then he withdrew it and injected it again, and then one more time. With each plunge, Hino went limper. By the time Tomoe removed the syringe the last time and recapped it, the senator's dark eyes were glassy, and there was foam at the corners of his lips.

Tomoe rocked back on his heels. "Now, Senator. When did you lose Hotaru Tomoe?"

More foam began to dribble from the man's mouth as he spoke. "December twenty-sixth."

"Where were you?"

"My mansion…" Hino's voice began to slur, and red streaks entered the foam. He sucked in a rattling breath.

"How did you lose her?"

Hino's glassy eyes began to roll wildly. "Sailor…came for her…"

Tomoe's eyes went as sharp as Hino's were glassy. "A Sailor Senshi? Which one?"

A noise escaped Hino. He began to shake his head back and forth, making dying-animal sounds.

"Which one?" Tomoe thundered.

"…Mars," Hino whispered. His eyes squeezed shut. Pure blood, not just blood mixed with foam, dribbled out of his mouth now. "My daughter."

A smirk, as sudden as a flash of lightning, flashed onto Tomoe's face. "Your daughter," he said softly. "So your struggling against my truth serum is to keep from exposing her. Apparently I mistook you, Senator Hino. I was under the impression that you cared for your daughter only so far as she gained you votes."

Hino's eyes slitted open with great effort. "I don't want to hear…my parenting skills criticized….by someone like you."

Tomoe's smirk disappeared. "Parenting? You don't know the meaning of the word."

Hino's glassy eyes closed again. He let out a small breath that could have been a laugh. "Says the one who…sold his daughter to me."

Tomoe sucked in a hiss of rage. "What did you – " Then his nostrils flared, and he surged to his feet. "Shit."

Chiral stared up at him in shock, wondering what had set him off. He had never seen the robot-like scientist act this way before. Then, belatedly, he realized that Hino's heartbeat, which he had been able to feel beneath his arm, had stopped.

"He's dead." Tomoe's lips pursed disgustedly. His eyes were still sharp with that intensity that had entered them when Hino brought up the Senshi. "A frequent side-effect of the serum – if I had administered a sedative, it might not have reached his medulla so quickly. His agitation sped up his breathing so much that he destroyed his own inspiratory center. Idiot."

Chiral stood, eyeing the dead Terran's body. The youma dog was beginning to nose at it as though considering eating it, and he wondered dispassionately if ingesting the poisoned tissue would kill it.

Emerald prodded the body with her boot. Her fan was in front of her face as though the body had already begun to decay and smell. The fear had faded almost entirely from her scent to be replaced by the fury. "So his daughter is a Senshi."

"Yes," said Tomoe shortly.

"And you knew this and didn't see fit to tell me."

"I did not." Tomoe's voice was cold, and the youma dog was beginning to growl.

Emerald snapped her fan shut. So quickly that Chiral could barely follow the movement, she was suddenly standing behind Tomoe, her Death Hands curled around his throat.

"I am beginning to sicken of your going behind my back, Tomoe," she breathed against his neck. "You had best watch it, or I might find myself as interested in this daughter of yours as those Senshi apparently are. Do you understand?"

Tomoe turned to look dispassionately at her, and the movement made the lamplight glint against something Chiral had not seen before: the syringe of lethal truth serum, held in Tomoe's fingers, just above his mistress's femoral artery. As he watched, Tomoe pressed the needle's tip against Emerald's pale skin.

Her face drained of color.

"I think it is you who needs to understand," Tomoe said softly. "If you lay so much as a finger on my daughter, I will dispose of you."

L

Tap, tap, tap. Diamond's fingers drummed his armrest impatiently. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap.

Tap.

"Ugh!" He let out a shout of frustration and shoved himself up from his throne on the bridge.

Sapphire, lying on his back beneath one of the control panels and using some of Emerald's energy to repair the energy crystals, cast him a glance but remained silent. Diamond glared at him, strengthening his mental shield as he did so, wishing that Sapphire would say something, would instigate some sort of fight. He wanted to _do_ something, not sit here drumming his fingers as the Wiseman and Emerald continued to fail to find the child princess.

Even watching, over and over again, the hologram of his princess in her Senshi guise had not calmed him. Serenity's hologram at the Chaos headquarters had always burned unpleasant thoughts from his mind, made him feel detached, as though in the cradle of some numbing, pleasant drug. But watching the princess fighting as Sailor Moon had only made Diamond itch more intensely. He was nearly bursting with the need to find her and envelop her, to free her and restore her to her rightful majesty, beside him.

He flung his cloak over his shoulder and strode for the lift.

"Diamond," Sapphire called. "Where are you going?"

"To Emerald," Diamond answered without turning. "To make sure she is giving the princess's capture her full attention."

Emerald's sliding door slid open when Diamond placed his hand to the biometric reader beside it. Inside, countless black dresses, boots, and gloves were strewn about the room, while data crystals glittered on nearly every bare surface. It looked like there was nothing in the chamber that would interest anyone but a fashion-obsessed woman, but Diamond sensed a snag in the fabric of space just above the clothing-covered bunk. He crooked a lazy finger at it. There was no void that he could not open, regardless of who had created them; this had been one of the powers that Chaos had given him.

He had expected Emerald to be inside the void. Instead, it was just as empty as her room. Its contents, however, were much more interesting. Countless holograms about as tall as his forearms spun from data crystals placed along the black counter that ran along the circumference of the void. The images were of the queer new youma she had managed to create. Diamond recognized several from the attacks that had been launched to lure out the princess. He bent closer to inspect them, feeling an unusual surge of pride for his green-haired commander. She was nothing to Rubeus – sorrow and guilt swirled through him that he quickly tamped down – but she had improved tremendously from the vain, bratty teenager he had recruited from the orphanage out of little more than a fit of pity. Between an ability to transform humans into youma and the power of Serenity's Silver Crystal, Nemesis would be a hard pill for both Chaos and the High Senshi to swallow.

A sudden beeping interrupted these pleasant thoughts. Diamond straightened and turned.

Above one of the revolving holograms, there was a projection of a map that showed this time's Tokyo. It had been empty and uninteresting before, with only a single line humming a quiet scan of its expanse.

But now a red circle was blinking in one of the districts. The projection zoomed in on the district, closing in on a single street, and a line of letters flashed at the top of the screen.

**AURA DETECTED: SAILOR MOON**

Diamond's breath caught.

An instant later, he was gone.

L

Sunday was a nightmare. Serena stayed up late Saturday night after track practice, waiting for Rini to come back from Elysion, but by two o'clock, she still hadn't come back, and Serena fell asleep against her headboard. She woke up in the morning to the dull roar of her mother vacuuming and rolled over to look at her clock and Rini's blankets. They were already neatly rolled up and pushed under Serena's bed, and the clock said that it was eleven-thirty.

Which meant she was late for Coach's Sunday practice session.

Serena threw on clothes and raced down the stairs, tripping over the vacuum cord and banging her cheek on the banister. It throbbed as she demanded of Sammy, who was still sitting at the kitchen table, "Where's Rini?"

"Dad took her to do a school project at the library," Sammy said around the piece of bacon sticking out of his mouth. "She said to tell you good morning. Hey, aren't you supposed to be at practice already?"

Another day without Rini. Still, at least she had told Sammy to tell her good morning. Feeling slightly cheered, Serena grabbed the last piece of toast from the plate on the table and tore out the door, sprinting for the subway station. She knew there was a train to Myugen that left at noon, and if she didn't get stuck at the intersection crosswalk, she would just make it –

But it wasn't meant to be. A youma presence flared in her skull, so close it made her teeth ache. She crammed the rest of the toast into her mouth and reversed directions, diving into the first alley she found and transforming.

A very cold wind seemed to bite into her shoulders as she scrambled up onto the rooftops, sending goose bumps coursing all the way down her arms and up into her hair. She glanced behind her, her shoulders hunching, but saw nothing. She wrapped her arms around herself, wishing that her fuku had sleeves.

She found the youma huddled in an alley not unlike the one she had used to transform. It was a human one, a man who couldn't have been any older than her dad, pressed in the corner between a Dumpster and the alley wall, shivering, his arms wrapped around itself to protect it from the cold.

All six of his arms.

Moon stumbled when she saw them and the dark stains on the bandages around the creature's middle. The backs of her eyes burned. She swiped a gloved hand across them. This youma wasn't even attacking anyone; he just seemed to be hiding, and she had no idea what to do for him. She couldn't dust him, but she couldn't just leave him here. She had to do _something._ But what?

She needed Darien. He would know what to do. He would be able to sense the man's body, be able to sense what – if anything – they could do to help him. She lowered herself to her knees beside the man, her eyes burning hotter as he whimpered and cringed away from her. Then she reached for the rope.

_Please_, she thought, thinking of how Darien had cut off their connection through the rope. But this wasn't about her, or him. It was about this poor man who needed their help. _Please feel this, Darien._

Her fingers brushed down the thinning strand. There was a faint sensation in her mind, a fleeting taste of him, like an echo of what had once thrummed strong through the connection. But other than that, nothing.

She kept a hold on the rope, gripping it, willing him to sense her. To listen. She sat so still that the youma man finally stopped cringing and looked at her pleadingly, reaching out toward her with the highest of his hands, his fingers trembling

There was only time for his icy finger to brush against her arm before yellow-white light flashed at the corner of her vision. Then everything went black.

L

When she woke up, slumped against the dumpster, the human youma was gone. There was only a pile of ashes at her feet around a pile of blood-crusted bandages.

Angry, frustrated tears sprang to Moon's eyes. She swept the ashes into her hand, scrabbling in the cracked cement to get as much of it as she could, then climbed back up to the rooftops. The February sunlight was still bright up there, the wind still strong and cold. She opened her hands and let the wind snatch the ashes and carry them away. She couldn't think of anything else to do.

There was no bump on the side of her head to indicate she had been hit to knock her out, but by the time she reached Infinity, her head was throbbing. There was also only an hour left of practice. Coach set her to do ten laps as punishment for being late. She stared straight ahead as she pounded down the track and did not look at anyone.

She did not know what she would do if Coach made her run relays with Darien.

When she finished, she ran the five-hundred-meter with Saori. Saori won, and her victory sent Coach into Serena's face, shouting at her for slacking off until Haruka stepped in and told him to lay off.

The whole time, Darien kept running sprints with Kobayashi on the track and ignored the whole spectacle.

By the time she stepped off the subway at seven o'clock that night, there was a tight feeling in Serena's chest like she was inches from crying. She wanted nothing more than to bury her head in Rini's soft hair and hug her until the quaking landscape of emotions inside her stopped shaking.

But when she stepped into her bedroom, the unicorn was standing on her nightstand.

Serena went back downstairs. "I forgot something at school, Mom," she lied dully and headed back outside.

On Tenth Street was an arcade that had taken up Crown Arcade's slack while it was out of commission. At this time on a Sunday night, it was nearly empty. The clerk, a high school boy younger than Serena, cast her a glance as she walked in, then went back to the manga in front of him. Serena drifted to the back of the arcade, past the cheerfully beeping Pac-Mans and racing games, to the old Mortal Kombat console in the dim back corner.

She managed to reach the Black Dragon level before her character's lives and her money ran out. When they did run out, she pulled her hand out of her empty pocket and pressed her lips together, looking at her tired, scarred reflection in the dimmed _Countdown to Game Over_ screen. In her mind's eye, she saw the alley and the little pile of ashes.

Then something brushed her pant leg. She disregarded it as a wisp of wind until the sound of a coin clinking into the game console came from beneath her. The game display flared back to full color.

Serena looked down. She saw a man rising from a crouch beside her feet.

Immediately, she took a step back, her hand coming off the joystick. She caught herself as she reached automatically for her Subspace pocket, forcing her hand to stop and holding it open awkwardly at her side instead.

The man – or perhaps he was a boy, he could not be much older than her, with his hair dyed the ashy gray color that had been popular when she was younger – was looking at her with a faintly shocked expression. His face smoothed over as soon as his eyes met hers, but she had already seen his disgust. She felt both embarrassed and relieved: if the guy _had_ been planning to do something, that plan was probably out of the window now that he had seen her scars.

Except he was smiling at her now, looking bashful and shrugging a little. For all that he was tall and athletic-looking, the way he kept his shoulders hunched reminded her of someone. "I couldn't let the game just end on you. You deserved more time."

Serena's eyes narrowed quizzically, and he twitched a little under her regard, his silver bangs falling to the side hang in front of his eyes. It was a self-conscious move, like the ones she often made herself to make her bangs cover her scars, and she felt a warm little rush of empathy. She smiled at him.

He smiled broadly back at her, taking a step forward. "You look like you've had a hard day." There was a little humor playing at the corner of his lips as he said this, as though he knew something she didn't. Serena smiled a little uncertainly.

"You could say that," she said. The way he'd spoken, almost patronizingly, and the way he was stepping forward into her space, was making her second-guess the empathy she had felt. Maybe he was just some guy who thought she would be easy because no one else would hit on a scarred-up girl.

She took a step back. "You know, thanks for the game, but, um, I've actually got to go. Why don't…why don't you finish playing it?"

"Me?"

Serena, already turning to leave, glanced back at him. "Yes."

"I actually…don't know how." The guy had transferred his gaze from her to the Mortal Kombat console, regarding it thoughtfully from beneath his curtain of silvery hair, and the casual removal of his eyes from hers was the only thing that kept Serena from continuing to edge backward. "Would you show me?"

_Seriously?_ Serena thought in some panic. Then she looked behind her at the clerk still sitting at the counter. Surely this guy wouldn't try anything in front of him. In fact, she was probably being full of herself, not paranoid, to imagine that any guy would try something on a girl with a face like hers. After all, hadn't she seen the disgust on his face when he saw her scars?

She took a step back toward him. "Well, first you put your hand here." She hovered her hand above the joystick.

He grasped it, making no grab for her hand. She felt even more ridiculous, and more secure, than before. Of course he didn't have any designs on her. It had been stupid and conceited of her to think so. Probably he was just new around here – he did look rather foreign, and his accent was strange – and had been looking for something to do. There actually _were_ people who had never played video games in an arcade before. She could still remember Ami's confusion the first time she played _Street Fighter_ at Crown.

"You move this to make the character move. Then press this button to kick." Serena pointed at it and watched as he experimented, making Sonya Blade duck and then do a leaping kick. "See?"

"Ah." Another satisfied smile was unfurling on his face as he stared at the screen.

"So…how have you never played a video game before?" Serena took in the guy's appearance again. He wore neatly creased white slacks and a snug black shirt, cut oddly, its dark color emphasizing his strangely colored hair. She found herself wondering what Mikai would look like with silver hair. This Shittenou-related thought led to another, and she found herself examining the man more closely.

Only then did she realize that he wasn't staring at the console's screen but at her reflection in the screen.

"Yes?" he breathed. His voice was soft and sibilant and suddenly right in her ear. When had he turned around?

Serena blinked, trying to clear her mind. She felt as though she was surrounded by a cloud of smoke. "Um," she heard herself say, and just as distantly, heard her mind coming to the conclusion that this man was not human, he was something else…

She looked at him. He was looking back down at her, his eyes interested, as though he knew that the gig was up. She realized that his irises were light and sharp, the color of stainless steel.

"Lead the way, princess," he said softly. His voice seemed suddenly seductive and…dangerous, double meaning clinging to his words like shadows.

Serena realized something.

This man thought she was Rini.

Somehow, for some reason, he, just like the youma at the Christmas festival, thought that she was Rini in disguise. And now he was trying to lure her away.

Serena stepped away from the video game and drifted back to the front of the arcade, through the electric doors. He followed, not taking his eyes from hers.

She was not entirely sure where she was taking him. She barely looked at where she was going, somehow unable to look away from him. She just followed her senses to a place where she could sense no presences, no one that might be hurt when she transformed to confront this…being.

When she sensed that they had reached that place, she tore her eyes away from him to look around. They were at a construction site, the metal girders of a half-begun building rising up around them. She began to turn back to the man, suddenly hit with the memory of the white blur at the edge of her vision that afternoon –

Somewhere between that thought and the next one, her back slammed into a metal girder.

Its steel rivets dug into her back. But they didn't dig half as deep as the fingers that were pinning her shoulders to the metal, or the steel-colored eyes that were suddenly burning into her eyes…no…not burning…caressing.

Her eyes slid out of focus. Light fingers slid down her scars. There was the faint sensation of a hot trickle down her chin, eclipsed by something warm and soft brushing down her jaw, her neck…

L

"…renaaaa! …going… late, sweetheart!"

The voice penetrated her awareness in patches. Serena moaned, her face turning against her pillow. Then she pushed herself up on her elbows.

"You'll never make it in time, you're a mess." Ikuko's voice came from the doorway. "I'll tell Asanuma to go on ahead, and Dad'll take you to school."

Groggily, Serena half heard all this. She nodded, her eyes barely open, and heard her door shut. After a moment more of just swaying drowsily above her pillows, she forced her eyes open.

Sunlight was pouring in through her open curtains. She squinted against it, sitting up and running a hand through her mussed hair. Her eyes felt grainy, and she realized, as she glimpsed her reflection in the mirror across from her bed, that she was still wearing yesterday's gym clothes. The white shirt was wrinkled beyond belief, and her head ached from wearing her tight sports bra all night.

Had she fallen asleep? She tried to remember and failed. She could remember Coach chewing her out…seeing the unicorn on her nightstand that meant Rini was in Elysion…and going to an arcade?

"Serena!" called her mother's voice from downstairs. "Don't fall back asleep!"

Serena stumbled out of her bed, nearly tripping on Rini's neatly-folded blankets, and into the bathroom. There was no time to wash her hair even though it was all frizzy and misshapen the way it always got when she didn't put it up. She ducked her face under the faucet instead, scrubbing it hastily. She tried to remember if the Luna Pen was in her pencil bag or her Subspace pocket so she could use it to hide the state of her hair.

As she mopped her face with a towel and glanced at the mirror above the sink, she paused. Her scars were so bright in the morning sunlight streaming through the bathroom window that they were practically winking at her. She had avoided looking at them for so long that she had forgotten how bright they were, how forcefully they dominated her face, as though they had been cut into her just yesterday instead of almost a year ago.

"Dad had to leave for work," Ikuko said as Serena came down the stairs, yawning, a few minutes later. "You'll have to take the subway. Is that alright?"

Serena nervously pushed her grown-out bangs over her ears. She shouldn't have let herself look at her scars; now she was going to be trying to hide them all day. "That's fine. Thanks, Mom."

She didn't have the appetite to eat the cinnamon strudel her mother pushed into her hand as she hurried out the door. Her stomach felt strangely unsettled. She dropped the strudel into a trash can instead as she made her way onto the Myugen line, ducking into the train car just as its doors closed.

The car was almost empty: she was so late that she had missed the crush of the morning commute. She stood up anyways, holding onto one of the poles instead of sitting, watching the other car occupants – an elderly man with a cane, a woman with a baby and a stroller, a middle-aged man reading a book – as a feeling ebbed into her, mingling with the fresh self-consciousness of her scars.

She felt as if someone was watching her.

It was nothing to freak out about, of course. Someone was probably just bored and people-watching her to pass the time. She did it all the time herself when she took the subway. Surreptitiously, she glanced at the other car occupants again. But the elderly man was talking to the woman with the baby now, and the other man was still reading his book – none of them were watching her.

Serena turned back to face out the back of the train into the darkness of the subway tunnel, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck rise even higher. She held her briefcase tighter and, when the train reached Myugen's station, practically jumped out into the crowd of people waiting on the platform. Even as she squirmed her way through them, though, and sprinted down the sidewalk toward the academy a block away, she felt that prickle on the back of her neck.

Only as she burst through the reflective double doors of Infinity and stopped on the atrium's marble floors, giving the security guard a sheepish smile as her pants echoed in the cavernous atrium, did the feeling recede enough for her to breathe normally.

Then, when she went to get her late pass, Ms. Purinu wanted to know how practices for the national meet were going; and in class, the English teacher called on her to do a translation for class; and then, just as she was stumbling painfully through the words, blushing in front of the class, Coach Etoukou, having apparently totally forgotten his anger with her the day before, burst in and pulled her out because, as he told her teacher, "Nationals are five days away, woman, when is she going to need to speak English if she doesn't win these races and go to the Olympics?" and Darien ignored her some more and Haruka joked with her, until one thing compounded after another to entirely distract her from the strange feeling that had seized her on the subway.

L

But it returned later that night. She had taken that night's patrol, which was supposed to be Lita's, because Lita had a huge trigonometry exam the next day. But Lita showed up, transformed, only a few minutes into the patrol, complaining that she had studied for hours.

"If I look at one more freaking formula, my brain will explode out of my nose," she declared, falling into pace with Sailor Moon as they landed on a rooftop. "Failing sounds like a much better option."

"It sounds cleaner, at least," Moon said. She smiled when Jupiter laughed, but her attention was on the surroundings around them, that watched feeling from the subway creeping up her spine again.

"Anyway, you head home and get some sleep," Jupiter ordered. "You look like the Bride of Frankenstein, no offense."

"Just because I didn't get to brush my hair this morning…" Moon began to joke again, trying to convince Jupiter that she was fine, but her best friend was having none of it.

"_Home_," she ordered, her voice brooking no argument.

Moon huffed out a sigh but set off toward home. She did feel very tired, so much so that her vision seemed blurry at the edges. But for some reason, the thought of going home made her shudder. She stopped on a rooftop, just trying to corral her thoughts for a moment, and suddenly the feeling of being watched exploded a hundredfold. She burst into a run.

The feeling followed her. She could hear her ragged breathing and feel her blood drumming in her ears, but she felt so sleepy, so detached, that it was like racing through a lucid nightmare. Distantly, she felt herself pour on even more speed, as though she was not the one in control of her body.

When she stumbled on a sloped roof and went tumbling to the street, she caught her breath and froze on the asphalt, dead certain that something was going to burst out of the darkness.

But nothing happened. Not once, all the way home. There was only her sleepiness and the warm trickle of blood down her leg from where she had scraped her knee on the sloped roof. As she levered herself through her bedroom window a few minutes later, she laughed breathlessly at herself for being so paranoid. She just needed…some…sleep…

L

From his perch on her bed, Diamond watched Serenity's past self slip through her window. As she turned to face her bed, she seemed half-asleep already. Her eyes met his clumsily – and immediately, they began to swirl into a blank, pupil-less blue.

Her legs gave way beneath her, and Diamond was immediately there, scooping her up into his arms as he had done the night before. Tenderly, he brushed her too-soft, golden hair from her cheeks and lowered his face to hers. His dangling Black Crystal earrings brushed against her skin, and, as though responding angrily, the silver scars blasphemously marring her silken cheeks began to glow a dull, then white-hot, silver. When their silver light began to dull and fade a few moments later, red lines of freshly re-cut skin were left behind. His eyes glowing, Diamond lowered his lips to the delicate red lines.

Against them, he smiled.

L

L

**A/N**: As usual, I'd really like to know what works here and what doesn't so that I can tweak accordingly. Feedback on Darien, Rini, and Serena's behavior (especially with each other) and on Diamond is especially appreciated. Are they in-character?


	34. Chapter 34

**A/N**: Hugs go out to every one of you beautiful reviewers! I was overwhelmed in the most delicious way by all your reactions. Please keep overwhelming me!

Special thanks to Sue for all her help. Another of her jaw-dropping sketches is up on the site; check it out RIGHT NOW. And, lots of "urv" to Jade, who has listened to (and participated in) all my Darien angsting and Sapphire fan-girling.

This chapter has **Gore**,** Language**, and **Situational Warnings**. Also, a **You-probably-will-not-like-what-happens-in-this-chapter-but-I-promise-I-have-been-planning-it-for-some-time-and-there-is-a-reason-for-it Warning.**

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

**Subject to Change**

Season 2

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Number Pi

L

"Sweetheart, you fell asleep in your clothes _again_?" Ikuko had her hands on her hips. "Maybe all this track is too much for you. It's not right that they put so much pressure on you that you can't even stay up long enough to change into your pajamas

Serena pushed herself up on her elbows and blinked blearily down at her bed. The comforter and sheets hadn't been pulled down, and her English dictionary and a notebook lay under her cheek, as though she had fallen asleep on them. But she couldn't remember…

"No, Mom," she mumbled mechanically. "I'm fine."

Ikuko clucked but went back downstairs. Serena slid slowly out of bed and stood up. But as she bent to pull her spare uniform out of its drawer, every muscle in her body seemed to scream. She collapsed back against her bed, gasping.

After a few minutes, she managed to push herself back onto her feet. Her muscles trembled too badly when she tried again to bend for her spare uniform, so she eased out her Luna Pen.

When she made her way downstairs, feeling grungy and gritty but looking like her normal self thanks to the pen's magic, her father was waiting to drive her to school.

"Oh, she looks fine, Ikuko," he exclaimed when he saw her. "You're just trying to guilt me into giving her a drive to school. Well, let's get going, kiddo, and if you're good, maybe we'll grab some doughnuts on the way."

Serena mustered a smile for her father. On the way to school, she tried to finish the jelly-filled doughnut he bought for her but couldn't. She kept feeling like she was going to throw up.

Kenji noticed this as they stopped at the last intersection before Infinity. "Uh-oh," he said. "Maybe your mother was right. You must be sick if you can't finish a doughnut."

Serena forced another smile. "I'm just saving some for later, Dad. You know how hungry I get halfway through the morning."

"Sure, kiddo," he said, but his eyes were worried as he dropped her off.

L

"There haven't been any youma attacks these past few days," Asanuma said at lunch that day. "Does that bother anyone else?"

"If by 'bother,' you mean 'makes me perfectly happy', then yeah," Lita said.

"I'm worried about _other_ people being happy," Asanuma said with a dirty look at her. "If they've stopped attacking, isn't that bad for us? It means they've gotten whatever it is they wanted when they pulled that all-out attack?"

"Serena, aren't you hungry?"

At the sound of Motoki's voice, Lita glanced down at the blonde girl sitting next to her. There was a bowl of beef stew in front of Serena and there was a spoon in her hand, but that appeared to be as far as she had gotten. She was just staring at the silver metal spoon, her eyes glazed over.

"Serena?" said Motoki again.

Lita bit her lip. Her eyes went over Serena's head, to the salad bar, where Darien was talking to a group of people and had been for nearly fifteen minutes now. Of the group, three were girls, two of whom had been forward enough to playfully swat him in the arm, one of whom had had the nerve to ruffle his hair, and _zero_ of whom had been glared off by Darien's knock-it-off-and-get-away-from-me glare. He just stood there, conversing with them, allowing himself to be flirted with, and occasionally flirting back, if the brief smirks he flashed were any indication. To Lita, they sure as hell were. This was how Shields had been acting all week – i.e., like a normal adolescent boy (probably for the first time in his life, Lita thought venomously) to everyone but them and Serena.

And this, Lita thought, meeting Motoki's eyes, in whose hazel depths she read the same conclusion, was undoubtedly the reason for Serena's current state.

"Oi!" Asanuma drummed his fork against the table. "Earth to Serena!"

Serena jolted against Lita's arm. Some of her soup sloshed onto her blouse. Lita glared daggers at Asanuma and grabbed a napkin to help Serena clean up.

"Oops," said Asanuma. "Sorry, Serena-chan. Don't worry, this ugly Infinity stuff is stain-proof. See, you can't even tell where I bled on it after Lita punched me in the nose."

Serena turned reproachful eyes on Lita. "Lita, you punched him again?"

"I did not!" Lita said indignantly, feeling supremely guilty under the weight of those exhaustion-smudged blue eyes but also injusticed, for she had only punched Asanuma in the eye, and only once. "He's lying!"

"I prefer the term exaggerating." Asanuma fingered his eye where Lita had punched it. "So, Serena-chan, we were talking about why there haven't been any youma these past few days. You have any ideas?"

Lita felt Serena stiffen. She whipped around to look down at her.

"Damn it," she said, reading the expression on Serena's face. "Serena, there was an attack and you didn't tell us?"

Serena bit her lip. "I know. I'm sorry. I should have called you guys."

Something about her voice put Lita on her guard, and the way her lower lip had begun to tremble even as she bit down on it made Lita's mind race immediately to a thought she'd had earlier. She'd had it as soon as Darien's silent treatment had begun, in fact – if Darien had cut off the rope, how would he come to help Serena during youma battles?

"You called Shields, didn't you," Lita's voice was low. "And he didn't come."

For a minute, Serena didn't move. Then she nodded.

A loud thump came from the end of the table. Lita looked down the table to see that Darien had dropped his textbook of the day onto the table and was sitting down, finally away from his fan club.

She hated him at that moment. She hated him so much that she would have let Jupiter's flash-form take over her body if it meant she would be powerful enough to kick his ass from here to Pluto.

It made her even angrier that he was sitting at the table _watching_ Serena. Staring at her intently again, like she was some freaking _lab specimen, _even though he had ignored her for a _week_!

A growl rippled out of her throat. "I should break every bone in your damn body," she said.

He didn't even take his eyes from Serena to meet hers. "You could try."

There were sparks burning the insides of her clenched fists. They were milli-amps away from exploding out when Serena stood up, sharply. She picked up her tray and walked away from the table.

Lita shoved away from the table and followed her.

Smoke curled up from the wooden table where her fists had rested.

L

Although Asanuma and Darien currently didn't seem to be speaking, they had somehow worked out some truce in which Asanuma picked Rini and Buji up from school and got them fed before they went to train in Elysion. It was an uneasy truce, just like the current interaction – or lack thereof – between Serena and Darien was uneasy, and it felt like nothing to Rini so much as a case of two divorced parents with joint custody exchanging their kids silently at a randomly selected fast-food restaurant.

All this bothered Rini immensely, but she didn't realize that Buji had even noticed it, much less been just as bothered by it, until Tuesday afternoon, when they were waiting outside a small pizzeria for Asanuma to emerge with that day's not-so-balanced meal.

"Geeze!" Buji stamped a foot as the door closed behind Asanuma. "Why are they all being so _stupid_?"

He glared angrily at his reflection in the pizza shop window, forehead scrunched up and eyes squinting. It was a rather ridiculous expression, especially under the winter hat his mother had made him wear, a knit thing with pom-poms dangling from its long earflaps. Rini might have laughed, had she not felt so tired. Instead, she sighed.

Buji peered over at her reflection. "Do YOU know why Darien's giving everyone the silent treatment?" he demanded. He kicked the slippery sidewalk, not waiting for an answer. "It's not fair that no one'll tell me! I'm a Shittenou, too!" He pulled a grubby little stone out his pocket. "See? It's just like Numa's!"

Rini pushed her mittened hands deeper into her pockets, not even feeling curious about where Buji had gotten his Shittenou stone. A longing for Serena was sweeping through her, as happened rather frequently these days, longing so strong she felt her eyes filling up with it.

Maybe, a month ago, just being able to talk to Asanuma again would have been enough. She would have thought that as long as she had him, everything would be alright. But this time's Asanuma was still not quite her Asanuma, for all that he was just as funny and could tell just as well when she was starting to think unhappy thoughts. Sometimes, listening to the funny stories he told her and Buji made her feel more sad than amused because all she could think was that she would never, ever see him again when she went back to the future. And that thought inevitably led to remembering that Serena, too, was dead in the future.

All Rini wanted to do was go to Serena and hang on to her leg the way she had seen other children do to their moms and not let her out of her sight. She had wanted so badly when she got back from Elysion last night to wake up Serena and talk to her, but Serena had looked so pale, so tired and in need of sleep as she lay there, that Rini had felt too guilty to wake her up.

Guilty, because it was almost certainly her fault that Darien was angry and not talking to Serena. The way that he had looked at her in Elysion had made her feel as if he blamed her, and Serena seemed so distracted – to Rini, these facts seemed proof that Darien and Serena had found out that she had taken control of Motoki. They had probably fought over what to do about it, probably Darien had wanted to punish her and Serena wouldn't let him. It was just the sort of thing that would happen. After all, Darien had never trusted her, not from that first night in the park, and Serena always had, even when Rini was such a brat to her…

"Rini, look!" Buji grabbed the girl's arm, snapping her out of her thoughts. "There's Gurio. Hey, Gurio!" He waved.

Gurio, a boy who was in their second-grade class and wore his brown hair in the most unfortunate bowl-cut Rini had ever seen – as she had told him on her first day at school, prompting Buji to jump to his friend's defense and call her a glue-eater – turned from where he was standing two stores away. He saw them and trotted over, nearly tripping over a passing man whose hair was so dark a black it almost looked blue. The color made Rini think of Mikai, who had been wondering aloud lately if he should go with blue the next time he got his hair dyed.

"Oooh, are you looking for a _valentine_, Buji?" Gurio taunted as he reached them. "Too bad Emi-chan's gonna like mine better!"

This comment made no sense to Rini until she looked behind them and realized that they had drifted from standing in front of the pizzeria to in front of the patisserie that was beside it. Its display window was full of Valentine's Day items, from towering red cakes to tiny, dainty chocolates.

She glanced beside her and saw that Buji had turned pink at the mention of Emi Ogata, the prettiest girl in their class. He recovered quickly, though, leering at the heart-covered red teddy bear that Gurio was shaking in his face, and jeering, "Did you get it, or did your mom buy it for you?"

When Gurio turned just as red as the teddy bear, Buji let out a triumphant, "Ha! So then it's like your MOM's giving Emi a Valentine!"

"Shut up!" Gurio launched himself at Buji. They tussled for a minute, jabbing their elbows into each others' stomachs and trying to pull each others' hats off. Rini rolled her eyes and watched until Gurio's mother came over and hissed at them to behave. She dragged Gurio off by his ear as he shouted to Buji to remember to bring his Mewtwo card to trade for the holographic Charizard he'd promised him.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot about that," Buji said a little bemusedly, tugging his earflaps back over his ears. One of the pom-poms had gotten yanked so that it now dangled to his waist by a wisp of thread. "I was supposed to go to his house yesterday for a Poké-battle." There was a note of unhappiness in his voice, like he was mad himself for forgetting.

"You've been busy," Rini said diplomatically. It occurred to her then that she had just tired to comfort Buji so he wouldn't feel bad for a Poke-battle. Before she could feel properly disgusted with herself, Buji made a sound of agreement and wheeled around, plastering his face and hands against the patisserie's display window.

"Aw, these aren't so great," he said, voice slightly muffled as he talked against the glass. "Toki-nii made a cake that was way prettier than this last year for his girlfriend."

Rini frowned. "I thought boys were supposed to wait until White Day to give things." They didn't have White Day in her future, but she had gleaned this much just from overhearing conversations at school. She remembered what she had done to Toki and wondered if she could make him some chocolate. Did he like chocolate? Should she tell him what she'd done and apologize? Would that make Darien and Serena stop fighting?

"Yeah, but it's _Toki_," said Buji, as though this explained things. "Wow, can you believe Valentine's is this Sunday? That's only five days away!"

Rini considered this. "That means your mom's supposed to have the baby in seven days."

"I know!" Buji turned around to flash a bright, proud smile. "Wouldn't it be cool if she was born ON Valentine's Day?"

Rini wrinkled her nose. "Not really."

"Thbbb!" Buji stuck out his tongue at her. "It would too!" He turned back to the shop window again. "Hey, when are you making your Valentines? You better not be buying them. I want a home-made one. White chocolate's my favorite, so maybe you could make it dragon-shaped – "

Rini's mind screeched to a halt. "Excuse me?"

"A dragon-shaped one," Buji repeated. "You know, since I turn into a _white_ dragon – "

"I heard _that_ part," Rini said hotly. "What I'm trying to figure out is what YOUR chocolate cravings have to do with me."

Buji blinked at her. "Because you're making me a Valentine's Day chocolate." Before Rini could begin to sputter at this, he added, "Girls always do, for the boys they want to thank."

Behind them, the pizzeria door swung open. "Guys!" Asanuma called. "Come on!"

Buji flashed Rini a grin. "Don't forget. White chocolate, okay?"

Then he was gone, catching up with Asanuma, and Rini was sputtering to thin air.

L

That night, Emerald appeared on the mother ship's bridge, her hair in a disarray and her eyes underlined with dark circles despite the makeup she had slathered on to cover them.

"Where's Diamond?" she demanded hoarsely.

Sapphire continued to type commands into the inertial compensator's mainframe. He did not look up from the data pad of command codes beside the keyboard. "His Highness has not deigned to share his whereabouts with me."

Emerald made a sound of frustration and stumbled back out of the room. As the door hissed shut behind her, Sapphire stopped typing. He slumped over the console, his elbows braced against it and his hands tight in his hair.

He had lied to Emerald. He did know where his brother was.

He wished he didn't.

L

Wednesday night was the first time since the Thursday before that all the Tsukino family members were home for dinner together. But Ikuko's smiles were tight, her conversation forced, and that only happened when she was displeased about something and planning to give a lecture. Serena, who, with her grades, was usually the target of these lectures, bit her lip all the way through dinner, trying tiredly to think of what she could have done in the past few days to provoke her mother's anger.

But, when dessert was done and it was time to start clearing off the table, the person Ikuko turned toward was Rini, at the other end of the table.

"Rini, I'd like to speak to you in the kitchen for a few minutes."

Rini shot Serena an uncertain, slightly alarmed look. For a stab of a second, Serena wanted to say sharply, _Oh, now you pay attention to me?_ But the feeling faded in a wash of weariness, and she sidled to the kitchen doorway to eavesdrop and step in if necessary.

" –an art assignment about what you wanted for Christmas. Nakahara-sensei said that you didn't turn it in," Ikuko was saying.

Even though she couldn't see it, Serena could imagine Rini's expression exactly, just from the stubborn silence that answered Ikuko's words. But eventually, no doubt glared down by Ikuko's Mom Stare, Rini mumbled, "She's wrong. I did turn it in."

If Serena had been able to interpret Rini's silence, she could interpret her voice even more easily. That defensive mumble was definitely a lie.

"I know a lie when I hear it, young lady," Ikuko said. "What really happened?"

"That _is_ what happened!" Rini's voice was angry now, not just defensive.

But so was Ikuko's. "Don't use that tone with me, Rini Tsukino. I know your mother taught you better than to lie – "'

"No you don't!" Rini's voice was so loud, almost a shriek, that even Kenji and Sammy turned around in their chairs at the table.

Serena looked back at them, her face flushed, her back flattened to the wall. She was full to bursting with so many emotions right then that she couldn't even begin to sort them out. Curiosity because this mysterious assignment had Rini so upset that she was lying about it; anger because Rini was yelling at her mother and because her mom was being cruel to Rini by bringing up her mother even if she didn't know it; embarrassment because somehow she felt that Rini's disrespectful behavior reflected on her, because Rini was _hers_, her to teach and guide; guilt because that wasn't true; more anger because she _wanted_ it to be true and because if Rini hadn't been with Darien so much lately, pulling away, pulling away, pulling away, this confrontation wouldn't have happened, Serena would have found out beforehand what had made Rini upset about this assignment and fixed it –

"Serena?" came Kenji's voice.

But Serena was pushing away from the kitchen wall, walking through the doorway to where Ikuko and Rini stood, one looking disappointed and hurt and the other flushed and angry, and she put her hands on her hips.

"Go to your room," she said. "Now."

Rini looked back at her. There was something simultaneously pleading and challenging in her gaze. "What?"  
"Go," Serena enunciated clearly and coolly, "to your room. You need to think about what you've done wrong just now." She moved aside and pointed at the doorway. "When you're ready to apologize, you can come back downstairs."

Rini stared at her. Both the plea and the challenge were still in her eyes, but the latter was engulfing the former. She clenched her jaw and strode past Serena.

It only took until her feet were thundering up the stairs, followed by the sound of the door slamming, for Serena to feel horrible. She turned around and saw that even her mother was looking at her with wide eyes, which made her feel worse.

The worse she felt, the more she tried to convince herself that she hadn't done anything wrong. "She was being disrespectful to you," she told Ikuko. "She knows better."

"Yes," Ikuko said slowly, "she does."

"She does," Serena echoed, nodding.

As long as Rini was grounded, she couldn't go off to train with Darien in Elysion. She would have to stay here, and if Serena just took up some ice cream and let her read some manga from her second shelf, Serena was sure Rini would forgive her, and everything would go back to normal. Yes, she nodded to herself, that would work.

She waited ten minutes, helping her mother clean up dinner, then sneaked a carton of Neapolitan ice cream and two spoons upstairs. She knocked before she let herself into her room. "Rini, I – "

Her room was empty. The plastic unicorn stood on her nightstand.

Serena threw the ice cream onto the nightstand. The unicorn toppled to the floor as she dropped onto her bed, digging her hands into her face.

L

"Serenity…" Diamond exhaled out her name as he materialized in her bedchamber and saw her slender silhouette on the bed. Her head turned immediately toward him, and her perfect lips parted, her eyes widening –

Then he was on the bed beside her, his eyes in hers, and her lips were closing, her eyelids fluttering lower over her swirling eyes. Diamond leaned close before her lips could close entirely and caught them with his, tasting the remnants of refined sugar and chocolate.

He pulled back, his eyes almost as heavily lidded as hers. Now, he thought, focusing his power to his Third Eye, he wanted her to say his name…to breathe it out against his skin. He closed his eyes in exquisite expectation.

But several moments passed, and no sound fell from her lips. Only her breathing, shallow and harsh, touched his skin. Diamond opened his eyes and saw that hers were still swirling that stubborn blue.

He would have to have been a fool not to have expected resistance from her mind. She was the Moon Princess, so tremendously powerful that even Chaos coveted her abilities. Diamond was not so blinded by his obsession with her that he had believed his Third Eye hypnosis would immediately succeed in trying her mind to his. But three nights had passed now since he had finally found her and took her into his arms on that city street. Three uninterrupted nights of his strongest hypnosis. In all that time, he had managed little more than to make her a limp puppet to his desires. Her body was his, but her mind was not. She did not stop his whims as he laid kiss after kiss along her body, but she did not participate in them either, did not give him the kisses he wanted in return. He had not been able to make her _want_ to obey and please him the way he had been able to do to all others under his hypnosis. Even though she, more than any other he had hypnotized, should want to please him, for he was the only one who would have her. The only who could.

Deep in her mind, he could taste the mind that he wanted, a thrashing resistance, hot and salty like sweating sheets and moving bodies. But it was like making love fully clothed; nothing of him could reach her, he could not penetrate to that part of her mind to compel her to use that power for him instead of against him.

"Serenity," he whispered again, against her throat. She did not twitch. Even her mind, stitched tightly to his by his Third Eye, did not react. His face darkened – he _would_ make her acknowledge him.

His fingers clenched as he forced himself to calm down. He had come up with a possible reason, after following her these past few days, for her extraordinary resistance to his hypnosis. He had noticed, from the very first moment he found her kneeling before Emerald's escaped youma in the alley, that her aura was not that of the Moon Princess from his time. The aura that he had sensed on the mother ship's bridge almost three weeks ago _had_ been her aura. But the aura that belonged to this girl, with her Terran-gold hair and Terran-blue eyes, was different.

It was similar to Serenity's, yes: it had the same feeling of being thick with power. And, setting aside the fact that her body was clearly Terran and not Lunarian, this girl was almost identical to his Moon Princess, from her tiny hands and thick eyelashes to her slender limbs and large, uncertain eyes staring up into his. Her hair was even in the royal Lunarian buns.

The only thing that was different were the scars that ravaged her face and shoulders. Diamond's hands trembled with rage as he traced one, following its ugly silver length from her bottom lip to the valley of her breasts. That some filthy creature had been able to mark his princess so, and that all his best efforts to use the Black Crystal to erase them had failed…

He sucked in a breath, once again forcing himself to clear his mind of anger. This girl was his Serenity, he was sure of it, but her aura was undeniably different from the Serenity of his future. That difference was why he had never sensed her until Serenity's aura flashed out for an instant. Somehow, she was both the Lunarian Serenity and the Terran Serena. And the presence of the Terran was making it impossible for him to hypnotize Serenity.

No… His hands caressed her waist, remembering the holograph Serenity's tearful lavender eyes gazing up at him. Not impossible. He _would_ bend her mind to his. It was just going to take some time.

Time was something he did not have enough of. Diamond did not know how much longer he could conceal his absences – and the fact that he knew the Moon Princess and her daughter's location – from the Wiseman. In theory, once they had the girl-child and took her back to the future, Chaos would grant Diamond Serenity's hand, but Diamond no longer trusted the Wiseman. Sapphire had sensed traces of treachery in the Chaos minion's mind, and Diamond felt, now, that if Wiseman found out where the child Rini was, he would whisk her back to the future and present her to Chaos himself, without giving Diamond any credit at all. Then all of Diamond's efforts for Serenity would have been for nothing.

A bit of hot moisture against his fingertips pulled Diamond from his thoughts. He looked down and saw tears welling in the girl's blank, Terran-blue eyes. As they broke free of her eyelashes, they rolled down the silver scars. Ever so gently, Diamond slipped one earring from his ear and traced its point down her face, cutting a small shape into the delicate skin beside her eyes so that a tiny bead of red blood welled up there. He watched the red trickle down and mix with the clear tears, and swept his thumb across her cheek, feeling the power of the Silver Crystal pulsing in the rough scar tissue beneath his touch, as though trying to repel him. Or, he thought, his eyes darkening as her breath against his face quickened, like the excited pump of her heart in her chest as it strained to meet his... He swallowed his pulse and searched her eyes for some sign that his Eye had reached her, that she wanted the same thing he did. But her eyes were still blank with no trace of lavender, his own reflection clear in the glassy Terran blue.

"A little longer, Serenity," he murmured against her lips, tasting again the fading sugar. "I will find a way to free you."

L

When dawn was beginning to streak the horizon, Rini returned from Elysion. She reached, with trembling fingers, to touch Serena's shoulder to wake her and tell her that she was sorry.

Serena, still trapped in dreams of metal and blood, made a sound of anger and pain. She jerked away, covering herself with her blankets.

To Rini, it seemed like rejection.

L

Serena was getting tomato sauce for her spaghetti in the cafeteria when she remembered that she had dreamed of something red and salty. It had been trickling into her mouth, not out of it the way it usually did in her dreams. She stared down at the red sauce on her plate, trying to remember what had happened in the dream.

"Serena, why are you tracing your mouth?"

Startled, Serena's eyes snapped up. She met Asanuma's expectant gaze and dropped her hand as though she had been caught picking her nose.

"They feel chapped," she said quickly.

Lita clucked and handed her a tube of lip balm. Serena took it and looked past her friends, lest they see through her lie, as she dragged the tube across her lower lip. Her eyes ended up snagging on a pair of gold ones several feet away, where Darien stood speaking to Kobayashi.

She froze. Something in his expression, in the metallic heat of his eyes on hers, had made her insides go deathly still.

Then he looked away.

Suddenly she was on her feet. "Excuse me," she heard herself say, and then she was walking, half running, out of the cafeteria, to the bathroom, crouching over a toilet, heaving up the contents of her stomach until her eyes burned.

"Shhh. Shhh, it's okay." Lita was next to her, her hands cool against Serena's hot face. "Get it out of your system. That spaghetti was no good, I could tell straight off that sauce was too dark – "

Serena retched again. A string of yellowish liquid splashed into the toilet bowl.

"There we go," said Lita with maternal satisfaction. "Stomach juice. That means there's nothing left to come up now. Do you want to get up?"

Serena choked on a deep breath and heaved over the bowl again. But nothing came up, just as Lita had said. Lita helped her stand on her wobbling legs and walk to one of the sinks. She leaned heavily against it as Lita put a wad of paper towels under the faucet. In the mirror over the sink, she saw that her hair was a nest of blonde tangles. The Luna Pen glamour that she had been using for the past few days because she never woke up in time to fix her hair had dissolved while she was throwing up. Her eyes were red from the force of her vomiting, and at the corner of her eye, a drop of blood was welling from one of her scars.

Her insides lurched, not with nausea. She leaned closer to the mirror, her hands gripping the sink. "Lita," she whispered.

Lita was pressing the moist paper towel against Serena's forehead. "Hmm?"

Serena stared at the tiny shape at the corner of her eye, the silver scar tissue as thin and faint as the thread of a spider web. It was the shape of a diamond, the bead of blood welling up at one of the corners, right where it left her eye.

"This scar," she said hoarsely, lifting a finger to it. "Was it always here?"  
Lita leaned closer to squint at it. "It's so small. I never noticed it before." She straightened, looking at Serena. "Why? What happened?"

The sense of being ridiculous, paranoid, wisped back into her again, building up, piling upon itself like cumulus clouds into a mountain of cumulonimbus. She leaned her head against Lita's shoulder tiredly, feeling Asanuma and Motoki's anxious presences outside and not Darien's.

She mumbled, "Nothing."

L

"You know what Lita said to you the other day?"

Darien, walking toward the back entrance of his apartment building, stopped. His face was impassive as he turned to glance over his shoulder at the blond boy stalking across the parking lot toward him.

"About breaking every bone in your body?" Asanuma continued. His light eyes were like little bits of ice in the dusky light. "If she tries it, I'll help her. You need a seriously good ass-kicking right now."

Darien merely lifted an eyebrow and turned back around, walking again.

Asanuma seized his shoulder and spun him around. "I'm SERIOUS!" he snarled. "What the hell is wrong with you? Did you _see_ what Serena looked like today?" He was so angry that he didn't even stop to see what Darien's reaction was, or if he even had one. "Lita told us what happened. Serena needed your help with a youma, and you ignored her!"

Darien's impassive façade faltered just long enough for his eyes to widen. Then his face closed down again.

"I didn't sense her," he said, as though that was a reasonable excuse.

"I know you didn't!" Asanuma hissed, his grip tightening. "Because you _cut her off_!"

Darien's face hardened. "Let it go, Asanuma. I know what I'm doing."

Asanuma made a sound of disgust. " 'I know what I'm doing,' " he mimicked in a high-pitched voice. Then he took a step closer. "Look, Darien, I don't care what you THINK you're doing. Whatever it is, it's making Serena look half-dead. So I'm stepping in to punch you in the face so you'll wake up from whatever funk that goddamn binder put you in."

He maintained eye contact with Darien for a moment longer. Then he let go of his shoulder. The fact that Darien hadn't broken eye contact meant that he was getting through to him, he was pretty sure. He dug a hand into his hair and closed his eyes in relief –

"It's not your concern."

Asanuma's eyes shot back open. So much for relief. "Yeah, it is! Because it was MY idea to give you that stupid folder! Because I had this crazy idea like maybe you would be HAPPY to find out you're actually meant to be with the girl you love – "

Darien exploded. "You don't get it! _Endymion_ loves the princess! So if Serena's the princess, then who loves her? Me? Or Endymion?"

He glared at Asanuma, his breath coming in quick, ragged pants. Asanuma was quiet, just staring back at him. He felt a fierce cold from the night wind whooshing past his hot face, and his insides were beginning to turn just as cold as he realized that Motoki had been right.

"Serena was the one thing I thought was mine." Darien's voice was harsh. "Loving _her_, not the Moon Princess, was the only way that I knew I was…that I wasn't Endymion. That there was a Darien, and I was still him." He stopped. "But if Serena's the Moon Princess...if all along, she's been…then I'm just…"

He trailed off and did not say anything more.

Asanuma gazed at Darien. He understood, suddenly. Darien's conflict went deeper even than what Motoki had said, deeper than just Serena. Wondering whether he loved Serena because of himself or because of Endymion was making Darien question his _own_ existence. It was making him question whether everything he had ever done or been was because of him or whether all his motivations, his actions, and feelings, had been Endymion's all along.

Could he blame Darien for going bonkers after a curveball like that?

He couldn't think of anything to say, and yet, at the same time, there were so many things he wanted to know. After a few minutes of silence, he asked the question whose answer had the most immediate importance.

"But why are you ignoring Serena?" he said. "I understand why you're upset, but…it's not Serena's fault who she is, if she is the princess. She would have told you if she knew. You know she would have."

A raw laugh escaped Darien. "Do I?"

Asanuma's knee-jerk reaction was to say, "Of course you do," but he swallowed the words. The Darien Shields before him wasn't the angsty bastard to whom he had come to give a black eye. Instead, he was someone that Asanuma had never met before, a dark-haired boy with dull eyes and slumped shoulders and hands that trembled as he dug them into his hair.

After another long moment of silence, that boy let out a long breath. "I thought I could watch." His words were halting. "Experiment. Talk to other girls, and then – then if I felt anything for one of them…if I could prove that it was possible for me to be attracted to someone else…"

The desolation in his voice made it clear that this attraction hadn't happened. He took another deep breath and began again. "And then I thought, if I could just figure out why – if I could identify the reasons I like her, and then – then filter them. Find reasons for loving her that would only belong to a personality like Darien Shields's and wouldn't conceivably appeal to Endymion's nature…"

He broke off once more and said nothing for some time. Asanuma tried to ignore the goose bumps that had begun to travel up his arms as he listened to his friend talk about himself as though Darien Shields was a separate being. Instead, he tried to focus on what to say.

"I know what you're saying, but…it doesn't work that way, does it?"

The black-haired boy, who had lowered himself to sit on the cold pavement, looked tiredly up at him.

"I mean," Asanuma sat carefully beside him, "love's not math. Breaking it down into pieces like that, it doesn't work. You can say, oh, I love her because she always laughs at my jokes, or, because she never laughs at my jokes but she always gets this little tilt at the corner of her mouth, or because you both like the same TV shows or because she can finish your sentences, or whatever. But then when you try to add all those pieces up, it's not like there's some magic number they add up to that tells you, 'Ka-ching! Congratulations, you love her!'" He paused, staring into the night sky that wasn't quite as black as Rei's hair, trying to put his feelings into words. "When you love someone, it's like…it's like the number pi, you never get to an exact number. The reasons you love them just keep going and going and...sometimes they even change."

He pulled his eyes from the distance and looked over at Darien. What he saw on Darien's face made his breath freeze in his lungs.

For that single, endless, terrifying moment, it looked like Darien was about to cry.

Asanuma looked hastily down at his shoes. "Well, anyway! That's just my estrogen talking! The important thing is – is, um – " He scrambled his brains for what to say, "is, have you asked Helios about all this?"

Darien laughed. It was a strangled laugh, and sounded wet, but it wasn't a sob, and that was all Asanuma cared about. "I haven't talked to anyone about this."

"Maybe you should. If anyone would know, Helios would. And, I mean," Asanuma's voice grew louder and more confident as the thought occurred to him, and he felt so relieved by it that he did not even notice the irony of him trying to convince Darien that Serena _wasn't_ the princess when he had been so gung-ho a week ago to tell him that she _was_, "if he'd thought it was even remotely possible she was the Moon Princess, wouldn't he have told you already?"

Darien didn't say anything. His silence made Asanuma, his relief fading, realize something.

Darien didn't want to find out the truth.

As long as he didn't know for sure that Serena was the Moon Princess, he still had a thread of hope. There was still a chance that all his identity-questioning had been for nothing. But if he found out that Serena _was_ the princess, then that hope was lost. And so, maybe, was Darien Shields.

No. Asanuma didn't believe that. Darien was Darien. He was too stubborn to be anything or anyone else.

But he didn't know how to make Darien believe that.

So he just watched silently as Darien got to his feet, unlocked his building's back door, and climbed the empty steps to his dark apartment.

L

Haruka burst into the house. Her aura howled and tore around her like a blizzard wind.

Michiru lifted her chin immediately from her violin. "What is it?"

There was no reply. Only the sound of Haruka pounding up the stairs.

Her insides tightening, Michiru followed her. There was no trace of Uranus's aura in the agitation buckling around Haruka, so Michiru told herself there was no reason to be scared. But the manic sense of…_betrayal_ that swirled through her aura caught at Michiru like torn fingernails.

She stopped in front of Haruka's open doorway. Haruka stood in front of her dresser, her hands braced on the dresser top as she looked at herself in the mirror. Her transformation wand was gripped in one white-knuckled hand.

Her reflection's eyes flicked to Michiru. Michiru took a step into the room. "What is it?"

Haruka's face twisted into a smile. Mixed with the betrayal still roiling through her aura, it was as much a smile as a sob was a laugh. She pushed away from her dresser and came striding toward Michiru. "Guess what I just heard."

She reached for Michiru's shoulders. Michiru flinched away at the last minute, and Haruka's manic smile brittled further. She shoved past Michiru, clattering back down the stairs to the kitchen.

Already regretting pulling away, Michiru hurried after her. She stopped when Haruka halted at the bottom of the stairs and spun around.

Her dark blue eyes gleamed up at Michiru. "Serena's the Moon Princess."

Michiru's knees buckled. She grabbed the banister.

"Yeah." Haruka laughed hollowly. "That was my reaction, too." Her eyes burned into Michiru's and then dipped down, tracing her body, before rising back to her face. "But now we finally know what to do."

"She…Haruka, she can't possibly be…" Michiru's fingers clenched in her skirt. "How did you hear this?"

"From Ittou." Haruka turned and headed for the kitchen. Her voice was too light, her movements too casual as she opened the refrigerator and took out a slice of left-over pizza. "Apparently he found out some time ago and told Shields. Remember that night I followed Ittou to the park and I had to run because Shields sensed me?" She paused, her burning eyes boring into space as she remembered. "That must be when he told him." Her lips curled up into a smile. "And now Shields is avoiding her."

The need to say something was swelling in Michiru's throat. But it went the wrong way, swelling around her throat and constricting it. She could only watch quietly, the same way she had with her parents. Quietly, weakly. Only murmuring a near-inaudible protest: "But Haruka…Haruka, you _like_ Serena…"

Haruka bit into the pizza. She chewed without closing her mouth and directed her feral smile at Michiru. "She sure made me think I did."

L

Between throwing up at lunch and dragging herself through yet another grueling track practice, Serena was operating on a bleary autopilot by the time she encountered a youma on her way home, just after dusk. By some stroke of luck, it was a non-human youma, just one of the black faceless ones. It should have been easy to handle, but Sailor Moon tripped over one of the unconscious bodies in the road, and she went sprawling. In that moment, as she was unable to control her motion, one of the youma's arms stretched out and seized her, hurling her high into the air.

This was going to hurt, very badly. Moon dully prepared herself for it, and had the fleeting, fuzzy wish that she had called Lita for help.

She was so out of it that she felt the arm wrapping around her waist before she sensed the aura that accompanied it. At the familiar touch, overwhelming relief swept through her: Darien was here, he wasn't mad at her anymore, he had come to help her.

Then she lifted her eyes and took in light hair, blueberry eyes, and an Infinity uniform.

The man carrying her through the air was Haruka.

Her shock was so great that she didn't even feel the impact as they landed on the street, a full four blocks away from the youma and its victims. Haruka's hands held her, hard, by her waist, and he was looking down at her with a smile like a knife blade.

"Yes, it's me," he said, and she realized that she had been stammering his name. "Haruka-_nii-san_, remember?"

His voice was high-pitched like he was mimicking her. She put her hands to his soft chest and tried to push away from him. Neither of them moved an inch. Haruka smiled down at her and seized her face between his hands. For a minute, Moon thought that he was going to kiss her. But he just tilted her head downward, so that she was looking at his chest.

Then, his breath hot against her hair, he said, "Uranus Planet Power, Make-Up."

His clothes faded away, leaving his body glowing faintly beneath.

Except it wasn't _his_ body.

But it wasn't just a girl's body either. At least, it wasn't until the glow brightened, and Haruka's waist began to shrunk, chest swelling even larger, as a white and blue Senshi fuku materialized over it.

Then the transformation was over, and Haruka's hands were gone from Moon's face, and Moon was on her knees on the ground, staring blindly at dark blue boots.

Haruka's voice came from above her. "Surprise." He crouched down in front of Moon, at her eye level. There was a tiara beneath his light bangs, and pale pink lipstick glistened on his lips.

"I don't…" Moon's coherence returned slowly, trickling like lukewarm water. "You're…a Senshi?"

"Yep. In other words – " Haruka lowered his voice dramatically, still smiling, "I'm not a guy."

Moon stared at him. At her.

"You look like all those Terrans getting their energy sucked. Stunned speechless." Haruka laughed, dark eyes gleaming, and leaned closer, hands braced against the sidewalk on either side of Moon.

Moon put a hand to Haruka's chest, now as soft as her own, and shoved. "You were _there_?"

Haruka smirked a snake's smile at her and caught her hand. "I thought so," she said. Fierce vindication burned in his – no, _her _eyes.

Moon stared into them, into the blueberry color that had once seemed so magnetic and now felt only venomous and unfamiliar.

"You're not Haruka," she said. "You're not."

Haruka was smiling humorlessly again. "That's the problem. I am."

"You're _not_," Moon said. Haruka had spoken of the youma's victims so callously, so contemptuously, called them Terrans…and had taken Moon away from the attack, letting the youma get away with all those people's energy. "You're the flash-form. You're Uranus."

Haruka's smile grew simultaneously wider and more acidic. "Isn't that nice? You two are both enjoying that little fantasy of thinking we're all lucky enough to be completely separate from our past selves." She raised her voice. "Come out, Michiru-ko. I know you're there."

Moon twisted between Haruka's arms to see a column of water twisting out of a storm drain at the curb. A Senshi, this one with greenish-blue hair, stepped out of it.

"_Miss Kaioh_?" Moon whispered. Her voice was shocked, but her mind, abruptly, was not. She remembered how, when she had drawn Sailor Neptune and then met Miss Kaioh, she had wondered if Miss Lanai's powers had brought her drawing to life.

But she had drawn Miss Kaioh as Sailor Neptune because she _was_ Sailor Neptune.

And, Moon realized, Miss Kaioh had probably been at the youma attack, too, with Haruka, and not helped to save those people.

The substitute teacher's eyes were on Haruka as she came closer. "Haruka," she said. "Haruka, you never said anything – "

"Like you would have wanted to know," Haruka said in disgust. "It was already bad enough that you thought you'd fallen for another woman." She snorted contemptuously. "On second thought, maybe it would have been comforting for you to know that you'd fallen in love with _half_ of a man, at least."

"I don't understand," Miss Kaioh whispered.

But it was clear that she did. That, like Serena, she was only asking in the hope of having the truth denied.

Haruka didn't give her the pleasure. "We couldn't all be lucky enough to be the same gender as the flash-forms that decided to take over our bodies." She looked away from Miss Kaioh and toward Moon, her lips twisting. "Sailor Uranus latched onto a baby _boy_."

Sailor Moon stared at her. Distantly, she felt hot tears burning her eyes. Then, almost as distantly, she saw Haruka's lips twist even higher, into another venomous smirk, and she felt her seize her shoulders, lips pressing to hers –

Steel-gray energy exploded.

When it cleared, smoke was rising from the ground, and Moon was in the air. Holding her was a man who looked down at her with metallic grey eyes beneath a black crescent tattoo.

Memory exploded in her the same way that his energy had exploded on the ground. _Him! _

Recollections of clinking coins and trailing fingers and whispered endearments and trickling blood chased down her nerves. _Diamond_, her mind supplied as she lifted trembling fingers to her face, feeling the scars beneath her Senshi glamour. _His name is Diamond_. Prince Diamond, who had traced tiny pointed black crystals down her scars, cutting them open and tracing his lips along them, drinking her silver energy as they re-healed.

_Darien_, she thought faintly as the black moon on the Black Moon prince's forehead widened and became a yellow-gray eye. The feeling began to melt from her arms and legs, leaving her limp as a doll. She tried to reach for Darien's mind again, to work past the mental fog rolling in across her own, but the rope lay uselessly in her weak hold, as slack and nerveless as her own limbs.

"That's right, my love," Diamond murmured against her ear. "You first, and then we'll go get the little princess."

_The little princess._ His words shivered though her mind, lifting the hairs at the back of her neck, beading, tiny and bright red and unignorable at the corner of her eyes. She had thought, that first time he called her princess, that he had mistaken her for Rini.

But he hadn't.

He was after Rini as well, and if he had known where to come to her bedroom each night, then he knew where to find Rini –

She felt herself beginning to hyperventilate. Clawing, clawing at the static that suffocated her mind. Silver power began to build and burn at her forehead, swirling like a hurricane. Her mind howled –

Blinding silver light surged out of her tiara. There was a scream, Diamond's arms tightening around her. Then vanishing.

The silver Twilight Flash hurtled away into the gray sky like a shooting star. Sailor Moon, without Diamond holding her up, crashed to the ground. Her teeth rattled in her skull, but she barely noticed. She was on autopilot again, lurching to her feet, senses lunging out to find Rini's aura and make sure she was safe. She found it a mile away, with Lita's presence, both of them alarmed and heading toward her.

She looked around and found the gouges that Haruka and Miss Kaioh's bodies had made through the pavement when Prince Diamond's energy hit them. Miss Kaioh looked to be merely unconscious, breathing steadily where she lay splayed across the sidewalk. But Haruka, slumped against the crumpled metal of a post office box on the curb, had blood running down her face from a deep cut above her tiara.

Hurriedly, splashing through a puddle of water, Moon ripped the bow from the back of her fuku and pressed it to the wound on Haruka's head, trying to staunch the blood.

Haruka's eyelids fluttered open, her long lashes casting longer shadows on her face. "What are you…doing?" she rasped.

"Stay awake," said Moon, who, from her own various head injuries, had memories of Darien making her stay awake. She didn't have a way to reach into Haruka's mind and make her, though, the way Darien had for her, so she would have to use a different way. "Say something. Talk."

Beneath the drying blood, Haruka's lips tilted up into a weak parody of the venomous smile she had worn before. "Aren't you too disgusted to come near me?"

Moon's eyes slid from the bloody wound to Haruka's eyes. It was more than she could imagine, to be in Haruka's shoes, half man and half woman. She thought of Lita's situation, nearly killing Motoki because of her flash-form, and of Ami's, being taken over by her flash-form and losing awareness of her own existence. They were both horrendous. But they seemed like _nothing_ compared to this. It was very hard for Serena not to feel anger, sick and hot inside her, at the princess for whose sake this had been done.

But the princess wasn't the only one at fault here.

"I'm not disgusted. I'm…" Moon struggled, trying to find the right word. She thought of what Darien would say, and it came to her tongue immediately. "Disillusioned."

Haruka's smile turned more bitter.

"I didn't think you were the sort of person who would leave innocent people to youma when you had the power to save them." Moon's voice was quiet, her hands gentle against Haruka's wound, but her eyes burned. "I must not have known you as well as I thought I did."

Haruka's smile had disappeared. She was staring at Serena now, her mouth parted despite the blood dripping slowly into it.

Moon touched her chin to shut her mouth, wiping the blood from Haruka's lips with a bit of her skirt. As soon as her hand moved back again, Haruka opened her mouth. "That wasn't what I was talking about. I mean the kiss." Her voice was agitated. "I kissed you!"

"Yes." Moon's eyes flashed. "I noticed."

"And I'm…" Haruka struggled, her voice becoming a shout, "…not a guy!"

"And I'm really sorry about that!" Moon shouted back. Her voice was thick with tears. "But it's not an excuse! You talked like you hate Sailor Uranus so much, but the flash-forms are the ones who don't care about saving the people here on Earth! If you're not using your powers to save people from youma, that's what's keeping you from being separate from your flash-form more than being part guy and part girl is!"

Haruka stared at her.

Moon stared back, glaring and sniffling, and then suddenly Haruka reached up and pulled her head down with a hand behind her neck. A kiss was pressed to her forehead and then hot words whispered in her hair: "You're not a princess, Muffin Head, you're an angel."

Then Haruka was gone. Moon whipped around just in time to see the blur of Haruka's white fuku as she picked up Michiru and then a faster blur as they both disappeared.

Moon sank back down onto the ground. Dimly, she felt the icy cold of the sidewalk seeping through the fabric of her skirt, but that was the only sensation that reached her. Her mind was so fevered and full, her heart pounding so hard and fast, that she did not even hear Sailor Jupiter land on the ground behind her and shout her name.

Instead, she only suddenly felt someone seizing her shoulder, shaking her. She blinked, sucking in a sudden breath, and saw Jupiter and Rini looking down at her, the little girl on the Senshi's back.

Moon looked at them. Then she looked past them, her eyes searching the dark street behind them, looking for a darker shadow. A flash of red, or white. Any sign that Darien had come with them and would be there any minute, shouldering Lita out of the way and furiously telling Serena off for fighting alone while taking her chin firmly in his hand and tilting her head every which way to check her for injuries.

But there was no sign. He hadn't come.

"Moon! Moon, are you alright?" Jupiter crouched in front of her. She had already torn the bow from the back of her fuku and held it, hovering, as though waiting to see where it was needed. "Serena, look at me!"

Diamond would come back. She could feel it the same way she could feel the blood gluing her gloves to her fingertips, the same way she could sense Lita's aura, crackling and powerful, right in front of her.

She wouldn't let him hurt them.

"Yes," she said distantly, forcing her eyes down to meet Jupiter's. "I'm here. What is it?"

"What do you mean, what is it?" Jupiter's hand tightened on her shoulder. "You're all bloody! Where'd the youma get you?"

"Nowhere. It's not mine. I'm fine." Moon smiled and pushed to her feet. "Just tired. I'm going to go home."

Jupiter's eyes narrowed suspiciously, but she stood as well. "I'll walk you– "

"_No_," Moon said, too sharply. Both Jupiter and Rini looked at her, the former with a flash of confusion almost sharp enough to be hurt. Moon forced herself to ignore it. "I need some time to myself. I need you to take care of Rini for me tonight."

This time, Rini was the one whose expression flashed hurt. But Moon was too tired, too scared, too distracted by what lay ahead for her that night, to notice.

"No problem," Jupiter said, crouching down to Rini could climb on her back. "Look…call me if you need me, all right?"

Moon nodded numbly, a little surprise seeping through. She had expected much more resistance from Jupiter. But then, as Jupiter adjusted Rini on her back, swept a hard, searching glance around into the darkness, and directed another almost approving glance at Moon, understanding flashed through Moon. Lita thought she was planning some confrontation with Darien that she didn't want Rini to have to hear.

The thought made a hysterical laugh bubble up in her throat as she took to the rooftops herself. She was planning a confrontation alright…but not with Darien.

Nothing attacked her on the way home except a sudden, uncontrollable case of the shivers. Shock, she recognized, struggling to climb over her window sill with her trembling limbs. She needed food, or at least something sugary to drink, but she didn't dare to go downstairs even long enough for that. Rini was as safe as Moon could make her now: with Lita, instead of here, where Diamond knew to come for her. But Mom, Dad, Sammy – she released a deep, shaky breath and pressed her hands to her eyes – they were still here. If Moon left, and Diamond came to find her and couldn't, he might take it out on them, might torture them to find out where she was. She had to stay here and somehow take care of him before he could go after anyone.

It probably wouldn't do much to slow him down, but she used the Luna Pen to make herself look invisible. It might at least give her an element of surprise. She stuffed pillows under her blankets to make it look like she was asleep in her bed, then opened her closet doors and pushed aside the old uniforms and dresses to make a space for herself. She crouched there, her back pressed against the wall, with her sword balanced across her knees. She did not transform her tiara into a shield: a shield was useless against an enemy like this. Her only hope was to hurt – possibly kill – him before he could use that hypnosis again.

The minutes inched by. Her legs began to cramp and her eyelids to droop, until she had to clench her teeth and press her thumb against her sword's sharp blade to wake herself up.

Somewhere in the bleary hours between three o'clock and four o'clock, her brain latched onto the idea that if she just make it to dawn, she would be safe. Perhaps she had dozed off without realizing and dreamt of vampires who would turn to ash in the sunlight. Whatever the reason, when she looked muzzily up at her window and saw gray light touching the horizon, relief gushed through her. A disbelieving, teary smile split her face, and she looked at her clock to reassure herself that it was really morning, that she hadn't just imagined it, and then looked back at the window –

And he was there.

L

"Ahh…" Helios fondly regarded the dream-flowers around him. "It looks as though we may finally have some peace and quiet tonight, my friends."

According to the small, strange "fone" device Darien-sama had given him, it was now long past three o'clock in the morning in the world outside Elysion. Usually, when Darien-sama, Bujiro, or Rini-hime came to train in Elysion, they came by one or two at the latest. But none of them had appeared thus far tonight, leading Helios to the pleasant conclusion that he would have a relaxing night of meditation by himself for once.

Of course, as soon as he came to this conclusion, the air shimmered in front of him. Darien-sama appeared, stepping onto the grass. His clothes were rumpled as though he had been lying down, and his hair was mussed as though he had been running his hands through it again and again.

Helios sighed at this latest evidence of an angst-episode (phrasing courtesy of Bujiro) and wondered what had set off his prince this time. "Darien-sama – "

"Is Serena the Moon Princess?"

Helios blinked. And suddenly found himself sitting on the grass, looking up at Darien-sama, his knees having given out with shock. "Serena…the princess?" he echoed. "That…well, that would, er…_explain _a great deal…"

"So she is?" Darien-sama's hoarse voice was a rusty knife.

"I…I do not..." began Helios faintly. Then his brow furrowed, his eyes sharpened, and he said, firmly, "I have no idea. But allow me to say, Darien-sama, what while it is true that such a thing would explain the bond yourself and Serena-sama, Serena-sama is not at all like the Moon Princess that Endymion described to me."

Darien gazed at Helios without speaking. Helios cleared his throat uncomfortably and elaborated. "Endymion-sama gloried in Hime-sama's grace, in her timid voice and shy demeanor. He loved that she was nothing like her battle-hardened Senshi or the bold noblewomen of Terra's courts." Helios shook his head. "The Serena-sama I know does not fit any of those descriptions. She is Senshi to the bone, and neither timid nor shy are words that come to mind when I think of her." He paused, eyeing Darien-sama to see if the youth was offended by his words. "And, forgive me, Darien-sama, but she is anything but graceful."

Darien-sama did not say anything. He did not seem offended, exactly. He was still looking at Helios intently, his brows drawn down over his dark, bloodshot eyes, and – to Helios's surprise, for he had never seen such a youthful expression on either of his princes' faces – he seemed to be biting his lip.

"Frankly, Darien-sama," Helios offered carefully, "knowing Serena-sama and having known Endymion-sama, I do not think that Endymion-sama would even like her very much, much less love her."

Still Darien-sama did not speak. Helios waited another moment, watching him, and then asked, "Darien-sama, who told you that Serena might be the Moon Princess's reincarnation?"

"Mikai."

"Well." Helios could not prevent a slight note of disdain from entering his voice. "I do not feel that it is bragging to say that I think I am better-qualified to identify Endymion-sama's princess than a newly initiated Shittenou is." He paused. "In fact, it now occurs to me that I may have actual proof that Serena could not be the princess. Do you remember when Serena-sama opened her dream-flower?"

Darien-sama was very still. "Yes."

"During the Silver Millennium, Endymion-sama knew where both his and the princess's dream-flowers were. He also opened both of them."

Darien-sama's eyes narrowed. "You told me it was forbidden for us to open any dream-flowers but our own."

"Endymion-sama believed it was no sin for him to open hers, since he was her soul-mate." Helios could not keep a little embarrassment from leaking into his tone. Endymion had always been quite uncontrollable when it came the Moon Princess, even when it involved sacred Elysian matters. "The point of the story is that both his dream-flower and the princess's led to wherever the other was. Endymion-sama often opened his so that he could go to see the princess on the moon."

Realization was unfurling on his prince's shadowed face. "But Serena's dream-flower didn't lead to me or Endymion. We weren't her dream – her dream was to be able to protect everyone."

"And thus, within her dream-flower was a new transformation brooch." Helios inclined his head, watching the understanding dawn slowly in Darien-sama's golden eyes.

He jumped to his feet. "Then she's not – I mean, she's almost definitely not – "

"The princess," finished Helios.

Darien-sama looked ten years younger than he had when he had arrived. "Thank you," he breathed. "Thank you, Helios."

And then he was gone.

L

Moon scrambled up with her sword. Her legs, half-numb, stumbled. She pitched forward and crashed into Diamond's chest; he was suddenly somehow inside her room, stepping down from her window seat.

His arms closed around her. "Look at me, my love."

Moon gritted her teeth in concentration. The beginning of a Twilight Flash began to glow in her tiara. She struggled against his grip, trying to lift her head to direct the attack straight at him.

But the attempt brought her eyes into contact with his.

The Twilight Flash sputtered and died. Her vision began to swirl and warp at the edges, as did her hearing, Diamond's murmurs in her ear deepening and rippling like chords on a harp. Her thoughts – of saving her family, of protecting Rini and Lita – fell away.

"That's right," Diamond whispered. "You don't have to fight. I'm here to protect you." His cold hand traced down her collarbone to just above her brooch. Then he leaned in closer, his mouth to her ear. "I'll kill that filthy hermaphrodite for touching you."

Moon's eyes swirled blankly, her pupils fading as silver chased blue. Paralyzed, all her eyes could see was the golden embroidery on Diamond's collar as he leaned in closer to exhale hot breath into her ear. Superimposed over it in her mind's eye was the image of a pink flower petal at the foot of her bed…

"Relax, Serenity." Diamond brushed his lips down her neck. Her body slumped against his. Cold fingers touched the side of her face and then traced once more down her skin to where her brooch nestled against her chest. He made a sound of pleasure. Then his hand closed around the circle of metal.

Moon's fuku burst into ribbons. Diamond seized them and used them to wrench her closer. When her school uniform rematerialized around her, his hands were on her bare back beneath her shirt, sliding around to her front until they spanned her ribcage, gripping as though he could crack it open with a single wrench of his hands. In her mind's eye, a flash of pink arms wrapped around her, and Serena's fingers twitched against his tunic.

"Still you fight me," Diamond mumbled against her skin. "Why, when I will give you everything? Even Chaos will not touch you when you are my queen."

Her fingers stilled.

"Oh? Do I have your attention now?" Diamond laughed softly. "It's true. Chaos promised to let you live safely in my custody once I have brought the little princess to him."

All at once, several things happened.

Serena's hands clenched into fists.

A black shadow and dozens of red blurs hurtled through the open window.

Diamond whirled around, and the puppet strings he had stitched into Serena's mind dissolved from his loss of concentration.

But Serena had already torn free of them. She stood now with her crystal sword held in front of her, panting raggedly. As Diamond growled and shot pure power from his fingertips, slamming Tuxedo Mask and most of his roses back out through the open window, the sword's edge began to glitter with silver light.

Diamond twisted back around to face her, his teeth bared and his Third Eye wide with silver-yellow power. Energy flashed out from it to grab her –

"I'll _never_ let you touch her," Serena rasped, her eyes burning straight up into his. A beam of silver light tore from her sword and hurtled toward him.

Diamond's enraged, frustrated cry filled the air. Then it was gone, and so was he. The Twilight Flash burned out through the window's fluttering curtains, dissipating in the gray dawn.

Serena's knees buckled. She slumped toward the ground and caught herself with one hand. Something sharp bit into it. She hissed, tears springing to her eyes, and she could not believe, could not _believe_ that after all that had happened tonight, this was when her tears had to burst out.

She forced herself back to her feet and pulled the rose thorn out of her palm.

"Serena," came a low voice. She looked up and saw Tuxedo Mask hoisting himself over the window sill. His gold eyes burned behind his white mask. "Are you all right?"

She dropped the thorn onto the carpet next to the razor-tipped rose it had come from. Then she stepped on them both, crushing them beneath the heel of her Mary Jane.

Mask had scrambled back into the room. He grabbed her arm, trying with his other hand to take her chin and tilt her head this way and that to make sure she wasn't hurt. "Serena – "

She wrenched away from him. "Don't touch me."

He stared at her. The rope connection had dwindled to a thread in the time that he had cut it off, and now he could only sense little trickles from her: shaking terror, blistering anger. But he could have read those emotions in the clench of her fists, the jut of her trembling shoulder blades.

He reached for her again.

There was a blur, and she was suddenly at the other end of the room, at the window in her Senshi fuku. She stood there for a moment, completely still in the gray light, and then jumped down to the ground and broke into a run.

Within seconds, she was gone.

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**A/N**: Reactions, please? Darien, Diamond, Rini, and Haruka need as much feedback as you can give me.


	35. Chapter 35

**A/N:** As always, a billion thank yous for all the reviews! All I laughed a lot at all the Darien-bashing. I feel I must confess that this chapter is…rough. As in, I think it needs more time on the burner, but I have selfishly decided to release it anyways because I am tired of rewriting it. Darien has frustrated me as much as he has you dear readers. If it helps, I think he has even frustrated himself. I hesitate to say it, because I feel that if authors can't adequately convey a message through their story, then they shouldn't presume to force it on their readers outside of the story, but what I am trying to show here is how the harder Darien fights against something, the more like it he becomes.

**june flower**, your review made my jaw drop. I was floored because I hadn't intended for any of the events last chapter to be interpreted this way – I promise that **Serena is not pregnant** – but if I had been the one reading this story, I would have made the same predictions you did. It was both a tickling and enlightening realization, so thank you.

Huge thank you to Sue, who has yet another marvelous sketch up on the STC site. Ginormous thank you to Jade, who is, as always, my rock. A very valuable rock, since she's jade.

Last, **Lethe** and **Mnemosyne** are actual Senshi from manga volume 17. To see what they look like, check out the STC site. There's also a link to their Wiki-moon site that summarizes their manga appearances.

**Language** and **Content Warnings** for this chapter.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Sailor Moon.

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Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Thirty-Five: Hypnotic

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Sapphire had noticed the day before that one of the glow-crystals in Diamond's quarters needed replacing. Such a replacement was a maintenance droid's task, but Sapphire was the only one, aside from Diamond, with the authorization to unlock Diamond's quarters.

He didn't bother knocking on the door before putting his hand to the touchpad to unlock it. Diamond hadn't been in his quarters for the past week due to _other pursuits_, so chances were ninety to one that he wouldn't be in them today, either. The thought made Sapphire's lips purse and his hands tighten impotently around the glow-crystal he held.

Then the door hissed open, and the stomach-turning scent of burnt hair and charred flesh invaded his nostrils. Sapphire snapped immediately to attention, lifting his arms in a guard stance.

Just as quickly, they fell back to his side, for his eyes landed on the source of the smell, sitting in the corner. It was not an intruder but Diamond himself. The white-haired man was slumped on his bunk, panting, with his feet braced against the floor as he tried to look at a gaping, black-charred wound in his side.

Without speaking, Sapphire teleported out of Diamond's quarters and to the med-bay. He returned just as silently, stepping into the room and sealing the door behind him. He came to the side of Diamond's bunk, the med-pac in his hand, and pushed his brother carefully down onto his pillow. "Lie down."

Diamond let out a deep, ragged breath and closed his eyes. From behind his mind shield wisped a thought that Sapphire tried to ignore – he had sworn to Diamond time and time again that he would never use his powers to read Diamond's mind – but he heard it anyway. It was something like a sigh, a strange gratefulness to have someone telling him what to do. It was streaked with dizziness, probably from blood loss, Sapphire thought grimly as he peeled Diamond's incinerated tunic from the charred, blood-slippery edges of the wound.

After disinfecting it with iodine and saline, he took the suturing needle and thread from the med-pac. There were no scissors in the pac to cut the thread. He would sooner chance that his saliva would not infect Diamond's wound than chance touching one of Diamond's razor-sharp Black Poison Crystal earrings, so he severed the thread with his teeth and sensed another of Diamond's bleary thoughts slipping from beneath his shield: a frustration that his brother would not even touch the Black Crystals the Wiseman had given them. But the frustration, to Sapphire's confusion, was also edged with a faint relief.

Then Diamond mumbled something. Sapphire, needle in hand, glanced at his face. More clearly, Diamond rasped, "Numb it."

Sapphire was torn between relief that Diamond seemed to be regaining some level of alertness and fierce irritation that he even had this injury at all. "No," he said shortly. "Nothing I'm going to do will make it any more painful than it already is."

With that, he pinched the bottom of Diamond's wound and hooked the curved, threaded needled through the lowest bits of skin. Diamond made a low hiss of pain, and Sapphire, trying to be as unsympathetic as possible because this was Diamond's fault, and he deserved it, and he needed to learn his lesson from this, said flatly, "So, you've finally found your princess."

Diamond's mental shield was almost completely impenetrable again, but one thought did leak out, one of fierce, furious possession, immediately followed by a stinging despair.

"Yes," he hissed. Then he seemed to shake himself and looked at Sapphire more alertly. "How did you know?"

"You've been out of sight for a week. Emerald has been sulking. It wasn't hard to put the pieces together, even before I followed your energy signature a few nights ago and found you with the princess's reincarnation."

Diamond sucked in a hiss of breath. "You didn't tell me."

"You haven't been here to tell," Sapphire said. "And I doubt you would have welcomed interruptions, just then."

A dull flush burned beneath Diamond's face. Sapphire continued to stitch methodically, tugging the needle through skin, as though he did not notice, but internally he felt relieved. At least his brother still had enough of a perspective on his behavior to be embarrassed by it. Their father would have shown no shame whatsoever at treating a woman the way Diamond had been treating the princess when Sapphire had seen them.

Of course, their father also would have taken it much further than just kisses and caressing.

"Do you ever think," Sapphire said, not looking up from his suturing, "about when we were children?"

Diamond's shield was completely in place; he did not sense any surprise from him save through his physical reaction of looking up. Then he looked away again. "Sometimes. There are not many happy memories from that time." He paused, his breathing harsh. "Except of the days we spent together."

Sapphire's throat closed up. Always, always Diamond managed to do this to him – made him feel surges of affection that washed away everything else.

But not today, he told himself. He tied off another stitch. "You liked to tease me then. I remember that sometimes you would bully me into sneaking into Father's private study with you or stealing Commander Rhyol's stallion to ride, and I would get so angry with you for dragging us into those situations. We kept getting caught and in trouble, but you never stopped, and I wanted so badly to kick you or punch you – to just _hurt_ you some way so you would stop."

He stopped for a moment. This speech was the one of the longest string of words he had made in years, since his mother's death.

"I never did," he finished, feeling somewhat awkward. He found that he could not look at Diamond, for all that he had felt so self-righteous before that he had been able to spout all this out. "Mother always read my mind and stopped me."

Behind its shield, Diamond's mind was dark and introspective. "And that is how you feel now? Like you want to hurt me?"

"Yes."

Diamond tilted his head back. "Mother's not here to stop you anymore. Why haven't you hurt me yet?" His mouth curved in a quirk of a smile. "Because I'm your brother?"

"Because you're my king."

Diamond's smile faded. He looked, suddenly, very tired. His voice was very hoarse. "Do you know why I must find the princess, Sapphire?"

His words had made no impact at all. Feeling just as weary as his brother looked, Sapphire knotted the last stitch and pulled back. "I believe that was the point of my analogy just now. To tell you that I do not."

"Yes," Diamond said simply. "I understood that."

"And _I_ understand that our father married powerful women and you have an obsession with surpassing him," Sapphire said shortly. "So you have fixed your attentions on the most powerful woman of all _time_ – "

"I listened to your analogy, Sapphire," Diamond interrupted, and beneath his weariness and pain, there was a spark of threat. "Now I am presenting you with one of my own, if you will be quiet and listen. Do you remember the circumstances in which we found Rubeus?"

Stung, Sapphire only nodded instead of speaking. He did not trust himself not to say something that would dig him deeper into Diamond's ill graces. Rubeus had been sealed into a phoenix-ruby hundreds of years ago by a High Senshi, and Diamond had found the ruby and used his own blood to free the demon.

Diamond's eyes were distant. "Do you know why he was sealed away?"

"He was a tremendously powerful demon," said Sapphire bluntly. Even he had second-guessed Diamond's decision to free Rubeus, not that Diamond had asked him his opinion. Even the Wiseman had seemed reluctant to free the blood-demon – although, in hindsight, Sapphire realized that was probably because the Chaos minion had known that Rubeus would swear allegiance to Diamond, the one who had freed him, not to the Wiseman. "They feared his power."

Diamond was silent for a moment. "I haven't told you much of what I have learned about the Moon Princess, Sapphire. I didn't think it would interest you. But I will impose upon your attention now. When Serenity was born in the Silver Millennium a thousand years ago, it was almost immediately known that she would have the power to overthrow Chaos. At first, the High Senshi rejoiced that she had come to be, but their joy gave way to fear. A being with enough power to defeat Chaos also had enough power to threaten their systems' sovereignty. Fearing that with her power, she would be able to take over their minds and their kingdoms, planetary rulers cut off contact with the Moon Kingdom. The High Senshi decided that the princess could not be allowed to live past her defeat of Chaos, and that she must, consequently, be kept away from Endymion."

Bitterness twisted his voice, and the strain of so much speaking was beginning to show. His face was sheened with sweat, pasting his hair to his face. Blood seeped from between the stitches of his slowly-healing wound. But he continued hoarsely, "Chaos told me that Serenity became a prisoner in her own palace, for no reason other than that she had been born with a power that she had not asked for." Beneath eyelashes spiked with sweat or maybe tears, his eyes bore into Sapphire's. "Do you understand the analogy yet?"

Sapphire could only stare at him.

"Chaos does not care whether Serenity lives or dies. Only under the High Senshi's influence is she a threat to It. It swore that if I brought It the princess's daughter, it would extend Its full protection to the princess and allow her to live safely with me. I am her only chance for a safe life. So ask me, Sapphire. Ask me, with those condemning eyes of yours, why I must chase the princess."

Sapphire's heart was pounding very hard. "Why?"

"For the same reason I freed Rubeus. Because I remember a young boy with a power that the entire Nemisian court feared and shunned." Diamond's eyes burned into Sapphire's. "I chase her because of _you_, brother."

Sapphire's throat was tight. He could not speak. He stared at Diamond, and Diamond stared back, and neither of them moved for several moments. Sapphire felt, for once, as though Diamond could read _his _mind. And he wished that he could, wished that Diamond could read all the admiration and respect and love and gratefulness there, and that he could understand why Sapphire was so scared and wanted him to stop chasing the princess and to keep himself safe. All these things built up, tightening his throat further and further and keeping him from talking until Diamond sighed and rose from his bunk.

"At any rate," he mumbled, his voice rough and cracking with emotion, "I have lost my chance to save her now. Her aura has repulsed mine times beyond count, and Endymion will not let her out of his sight now that he has seen me. The High Senshi will reach her. And then…"

"Diamond." Sapphire's voice was quiet, as though he half hoped that his brother would not hear him. But Diamond went still.

"There is…something." Misgiving swirled inside Sapphire, along with the desperate need to do something to help his brother, to eradicate the slump from his shoulders and the terrible desolation from his eyes. The Moon Princess was a fool not to understand what a champion she had in his brother. Endymion was a lump of coal compared to him. "You said that it is the princess's new aura that has resisted you."

He had not actually said it; it was something that Sapphire had gleaned from his thoughts. But Diamond did not seem to notice. He turned, and his eyes were already glinting. "Yes?"

"I have been thinking that…perhaps…" Sapphire took a deep breath. "The aura that has been giving you problems is the Terran one–Sailor Moon's aura. The one that only exists to disguise the princess in this time until she finds the Silver Crystal and becomes the Moon Princess that exists in our present."

Diamond was listening closely, his silver brows drawn. Above them, his Third Eye was open and glowing with agitation.

"Without the Terran aura–without Sailor Moon's aura interfering with the princess's, would you be able to use your powers on her?"

"Easily," Diamond said hoarsely. "But there is still the problem of Endymion."

"Suppose…" Sapphire's throat felt tight. "Suppose that you could go back in time to the Silver Millennium? To when the princess's aura was still untainted and whole and–" He watched Diamond's face, "before she had even met Endymion."

Diamond's Third Eye was blinking fast, its rhythm like an eager, pulsing heart. But his expression was pained as he raked a hand through his hair. "Don't be a fool, Sapphire, the power required to travel so far back in time–"

"Would be easily supplied by the child princess."

Diamond's hand stopped in his hair. He stared at Sapphire.

"Like you, there is something she craves more than anything else." Sapphire's voice was as dispassionate as he could make it, though he was trembling inside. If Diamond went through with this, Sapphire would never see him again. "I began to follow her after I saw you with the Moon Princess." He thought of the little girl standing in front of the patisserie on the cold street, staring at the decorated cakes without seeing them, her thoughts of only one thing. One person. "She wants Serena Tsukino to be her mother."

"Serena Tsu…" began Diamond in confusion, his forehead creasing, but then it smoothed again. "Ah. The princess's Terran disguise." He frowned once more. "But she is her mother."

"The child doesn't know it yet. None of them do. They all think that Sailor Moon was a Senshi in the Silver Millennium and that the Moon Princess's reincarnation is someone they have not met yet."

Diamond's eyes gleamed. He began to pace, absentmindedly holding a hand to the bandage over his wound. "So what I must do is go to the girl with some story about needing to get to the Silver Millennium and the princess. Suggest that this is her chance to change the past, to keep the princess and Endymion from marrying so that she can have the mother she wants…"

His words were a quiet murmur, meant for his own ears and not Sapphire's, but behind his mental shield, thoughts and emotions swirled like a howling hurricane. Sapphire felt battered by them, for all that he could not read them. Knowing that he was the one who had given Diamond the idea to tear a child irreparably from the one thing she wanted more than anything else in the world only made him feel worse.

Abruptly, Diamond stopped pacing. He looked straight at Sapphire, and the fire in his three eyes was frightening to behold.

"I will not ask," he said in a cold voice, "why you have not seen fit to present all this information to me sooner."

Sapphire bowed his head, as much to escape the painful hear of his brother's eyes as to express deference.

Diamond's hands reached for Sapphire's throat…and then settled on his shoulders. "Ah, Sapphire," he said softly. Warmth, not fire, glowed in his eyes now. "How could I punish you when all you have ever done is try to protect me?"

As abruptly as he had seized him, he let go of Sapphire, spun, and disappeared from the room. Without hands to hold him up, Sapphire collapsed backward onto the bunk, fairly trembling from the fire of Diamond's eyes and the power surging behind his mental shield.

His last thought, before he passed out from the drain of dealing with Diamond, was that Diamond had never really needed the Wiseman's Third Eye.

He could be hypnotic all on his own.

L

Rini hadn't slept a wink all night. Lita knew she hadn't because she hadn't either. There had been something sickening about the look on Serena's face as she had watched them leave, something that wriggled behind Lita's eyelids and kept her wide awake.

She was going to kill Shields for making Serena look like that, she really was. It pissed her off even more to think that at this moment, Serena might be forgiving him, letting him saunter back into her life just like he always did, after all that he had done to her. Not to mention what his treatment of Serena was doing to Rini. Lita's eyes slid from the four a.m. infomercial playing on the TV to where the little girl was curled up on the floor under a blanket, the light from the TV screen reflecting off her dull eyes. She hadn't spoken a word since they had left Serena, and it was starting to scare Lita. She had an illogical, terrifying feeling that when she brought Rini back to Serena, she would stay like this, a silent, blank-eyed creature like a broken doll, and Serena would look at Lita with accusation in her eyes for bringing Rini back broken…

"Lita."

Lita sat up straight, her eyes flying open. The six a.m. news was on, and Rini stood in front of her, folding the blanket she had huddled under. Lita must have fallen asleep and into a dream.

"I want to go back now."

Lita rolled out of the armchair, her joints popping. "Alright." She didn't see any reason not to. Serena and Darien would either have made up by now or not; even they couldn't stand there arguing with each other for five hours solid. She transformed and crouched so that Rini could climb onto her back. For a second, as Rini's thin arms wrapped around her, she felt a brief flash of jealousy for Serena for having this little girl who loved her so completely, so fiercely that the fight between her and Darien had made her so upset. Would she, Lita, ever have a little one who would love her this much? Her thoughts instantly flashed, of course, to Motoki, and she flinched away from them just as swiftly, shoving out of her apartment window.

She was too distracted by trying to avoid thoughts of Motoki to notice Rini's state as they made their way to the Tsukino house: how Rini's hands sweated and fisted, how her jaw clenched, how little shudders traveled up and down her body as though she was swallowing sobs before they could come out of her mouth. Only as they landed in the yard and spotted Tuxedo Mask's shadowy form dropping down from the tree branch near Serena's window did Jupiter feel the hot drop of wetness fall on the skin of her neck. She turned her head to ask Rini if she was crying, but then it was too late, Rini was scrambling down from her back and stalking toward Darien with her hands balled at her sides.

Jupiter hung back, thinking with dark satisfaction that Darien was finally going to get the earful he deserved. But there was none of the explosion of shouting, she had expected – there was only Rini slamming her tiny hands into Mask's stomach as though to tip him over, and her voice, shaking too badly for Jupiter to be able to make out what she said, growing and growing in volume and pitch until it burst into ragged, wrenching sobs.

"Hey. Hey!" Jupiter raced forward, seizing Rini into a loose embrace, throwing her head back to glare up at Mask for whatever he'd done to make her cry.

But her thoughts froze. Mask looked like he was going to throw up, just as Serena had the day before. He was staring at Rini with blank, the skin around his mouth as white as his mask.

"What?" Jupiter demanded, looking down at Rini. "What is it?"

Mask didn't make a sound. He just kept staring at Rini, and his face seemed to become more and more colorless the longer he stared at her. Jupiter found herself putting her hands over Rini's eyes as though to protect the child from the horrible deadness of his face. "Come on," she heard herself saying. "Come on, we're going to go, okay, we're going to go get some breakfast and find Serena, okay?"

Rini cried harder.

Jupiter didn't know what to do. She'd never felt so helpless in her life. In the end, she scooped Rini up into her arms and took her back to her apartment, leaving Mask standing there white-faced and silent on Serena's front lawn.

L

The air around them was so chilly it bit through Michiru's skin. She tried hard not to shiver, not sure whether people who were supposed to be unconscious shivered when they were cold, but quite a few tremors shook through her anyway. She pretended still to be unconscious anyway, because even though she had been lolling from Haruka's back for what had to be hours now, she still didn't know what to say to her – to _him_.

A twig cracked beneath Haruka's foot, making them skid slightly on the forest's slippery carpet of leaves. The movement shifted Michiru's chest against Haruka's back, and Haruka's hands tightened, slipping higher above Michiru's knees to grip her thighs more tightly

Michiru clenched her eyelids more tightly shut against the warmth that rippled through her. It seemed like the only thing she _did_ know was that even after everything that had been revealed, she still wanted Haruka. She still shivered inside when Haruka touched her, still ached when she thought of how softly Haruka had spoken to Serena, still felt like crying when she realized now why Haruka had never wanted to talk about why her mother had left her with her uncle when Haruka was only a child and never come back.

Oh, damn it, she was crying now. The tear slipped from her nose and onto Haruka's neck.

Haruka's muscles tightened beneath her. They stopped moving. "I know you're awake, Kaioh."

Kaioh? That was what they were back to now? Michiru bit her lip and slid down Haruka's back to the ground without looking meeting the dark blueberry eyes.

"I understand if you want to leave."

Michiru was listening to the timbre of Haruka's voice, the lowness of it that she had always thought was so pleasant, almost tenor instead of alto, and thinking how stupid she had been. If only she had noticed, had realized, earlier, if she could have spoken to Haruka about it and _helped_ her. Him. Another tear rolled down her cheek.

Then the meaning of what Haruka had said caught up to her, and her wet eyes flashed up to Haruka's, wide and hurt. "You want me to leave?"

Haruka was watching her. "If you want to."

"You think – " Michiru broke off and swallowed. She wouldn't cry, she told herself. She wouldn't, "you think I'd that I would leave you just because – just because you –"

"Just because?" Haruka repeated. "There's no _just_ about it, Michiru. I'm a freak."

"You're you," said Michiru, blinking back tears. "Why did you believe Serena when she told you it doesn't matter but when I say it you won't believe me?"

Haruka began to reach for her, then stopped, lowering her arm back to her side.

Michiru took the lowered arm and wrapped it around herself, putting her face to Haruka's shoulder. Haruka leaned away, not releasing her shoulder, but seeming unwilling to let their chests touch. Her clear discomfort, her shame, broke Michiru's heart. She reached up, put her hand to Haruka's face.

"I love you," she whispered. "That hasn't changed, Haruka."

Haruka's eyes slid almost unwillingly to hers. With a sigh, she lowered herself to sit atop a fallen tree. For the first time, Michiru saw her her muscles trembled beneath the Senshi fuku. How long had she been running?

"They didn't know anything was wrong when I was born." Haruka's hands hung between her knees, and she stared down at them as she talked. As she spoke, her transformation melted from her, covering the slender, muscled legs with Infinity's uniform trousers and the feminine chest with a uniform shirt and sweater. For the first time, Michiru saw Haruka the way she had on her first day at Infinity: as a man, a slender, delicately-featured man with eyes like a storm. She felt the pronouns in her head shifting from _she_ and _her_ and _he_ and _him_.

"I was born a little early, so I was small, but I had all the normal boy parts. Nobody suspected anything. As I got older, I was pretty skinny, but most of the time, people still didn't think anything of it. The only one who did was my dad, and that was just because I was so small I never got chosen for any of the sports teams. He played baseball in the minor leagues when he was younger, and I guess having a son who didn't play sports and win trophies made him feel like a failure. Or maybe even back then he had some idea of what was happening. I don't know. I just remember that he didn't like it when people said stuff about how little and young I looked, or how I was almost too pretty to be a boy, and that my mom didn't like anything that made my dad angry, so when I got to middle school, I tried out for the track team so he'd be happy.

"Things were okay, then. I got along with the other guys on the team. And I was good at running. I loved it. The only weird part was being in the locker room. Most the guys were starting to…" Haruka let out a breath and shook his head. "Let's just say, when eighth grade hit and they started growing facial hair, I started growing _these_." He passed his hand through the air in front of his chest, as though his own body was something he didn't want to touch.

"I didn't know what was going on," he said. His voice had gone lower, almost to a whisper. He had his elbows braced on his knees, his fingers digging into his hair. "I tried to hide it, I was so embarassed. I wore an extra undershirt everywhere and sweatshirts every day, even to practices and meets. But then we went to beach for a family vacation, and one of my cousins pushed me into the water and wrestled my shirts off…and they all saw.

"My parents tried to pretend like it was normal at first. My mom said it was probably just fat tissue. You know –" His lips twisted in a terrible, humorless smile, "man boobs."

"But there was no way to ignore the other things that were happening. I was growing hair under my arms but not on my face, I didn't have an Adam's apple, my voice wasn't changing... They took me to a doctor my dad knew, but he didn't know what was going on. He wanted me to go to a specialist, but my dad flipped. Said they'd make me some sort of specimen and put me in the newspapers, and everyone'd say he had a hermaphrodite for a son. He bought an exercise machine instead and put it in the house and made me work out every day and lift weights like he could _make_ me into a man. He just stood there in the corner watching me with his arms crossed…and when my mom got home, they would fight about it…"

Haruka trailed off. He was silent for a long time. At last he took a deep breath and started again. "One day my mom said she was taking me to see a doctor in Tokyo. We left when I got home from school and got here a little bit after sunset. We went to my grandfather's place, he owned in auto shop in Edogawa Ward. They didn't get along very well because he didn't like my dad, but I figured he must have said we could stay there so we could go to the doctor the next morning. I went to sleep while my mom stayed up talking with him, and when I woke up the next morning, she was gone. Gramps let me try to call her, but she didn't pick up. They never did."

He straightened up, his hand dropping out of his hair. "I went to high school in Tokyo after that, staying with my grandfather. He let me help in the shop, and that's how I got into F1 driving. He let me drive one of the cars I'd helped repair, and the manager saw me in it and signed me onto his team. During my third race, I got into a wreck that I shouldn't have survived. I woke up in the hospital, and Pluto was there. She told me what I was, why I'd survived the crash. She had me transform, and that's when I found out why I was born…like _this_." His eyes lifted to hers. "She sent me to Infinity…and that's where I met you."

Michiru sat up a little straighter at this. She had been so absorbed in this story of Haruka's past, all the pain that he had never been willing to tell her before, and it had seemed so much like a life that must have belonged to someone else, not to the bright, stubborn Haruka that she knew, that she had forgotten that she would eventually be part of the story.

Haruka met her gaze squarely. "I hated you," he said. "Here I had just found out the truth about myself, the truth that I would never be able to share with anyone…and _I couldn't get you out of my head_."

Michiru stared at him, wide-eyed. She hadn't known that Haruka had even noticed her for those first few weeks they went to school together. He had always been laughing at the center of the group, graceful in his scratchy burgundy Infinity sweater, and she had always been in the corner of the classroom, chewing the end of her pen and trying not to watch him.

"It was like some divine punishment," he said. "What were the odds that just when I found out I was going to have to live with being a woman, I saw a girl who made me want her, who made me feel like a real man for the first time in my life? I hated you for doing that to me. But I still wanted you. But I couldn't let anything come of it. That's why I lied and told you I was a girl, because I thought that if you knew that, you would reject me."

Michiru squeezed her hands tightly in her lap. She could remember how thrilled she had been the first time Haruka spoke to her, coming into one of the music rooms as she was practicing with her violin and listening for a moment before saying, "That one's putting me to sleep, can't you play something funner?" How Haruka had always come to her music room after that and listened, lying on the floor with eyes closed and foot bobbing in time to the piece, how they had begun to talk in classes, quiet, secret murmurs and smiles that no one else in the class had been privy to. How, on that stormy afternoon, Haruka had come to the music room and not lied down and instead stood in front of the door and said, eyes burning into her, "Thought I'd let you know I'm actually a girl." How Michiru had only stared, even as Haruka turned away, face blank as stone, and walked out the door again, and how Michiru had sat there in the silent, silent room for a full minute, the thoughts building up and compressing in her brain until it seemed that her eardrums must explode, and when she did, she burst from the room and ran down the hallway as she had never run before, throwing herself into Haruka's slender back and gripping handfuls of burgundy sweater desperately in her hands.

Even if she had _wanted_ to reject Haruka, she would never have been able to.

"And then we found out you were a Senshi, too," Haruka said. "It made me hate you again. Even more than before. You were a Senshi, but you hadn't been born twisted like I had. I wanted to punish you for it. I wanted to make you love me so that when you found out the truth you would feel just as humiliated, just as…disgusting…as I did."

The memories from that time replayed themselves in Michiru's mind, now seen with new eyes. After Pluto had come and shown them she was a Senshi, too, Haruka had turned so passionate, so wild. Their first kiss had come after that, in Michiru's apartment: Haruka had shut the front door behind them and turned to Michiru slowly, and in the dark room, her eyes had seemed to glow like a predator's. The fingertip she slid from Michiru's collarbone to her chin to tilt her face upward had left a warm, tingling trail behind, like a knife, and her kiss had been just as sharp, just as penetrating. Then, Michiru had been too dazed, too confused, too enraptured to think further into it than that Haruka had just been so thrilled that Michiru was a Senshi like her, that now they could share even this part of their lives. Now, she could recognize the violence of Haruka's lips against hers, the too-tightness of Haruka's fingers squeezing her arms. And later, the dozens of kisses after that, the almost dangerous gleam in Haruka's eyes as she traced fingers down Michiru's face, her neck, her arms.

The only dangerous thing in Haruka's eyes now was the desolation in them as he looked at Michiru, the lack of hope that made her ribs tighten as though they would cut off the circulation of all the blood from her heart.

He spoke. "The person you think you love never existed, Michiru."

There was silence for a moment. Then:

"Then who was the person who never let us get further than simple kisses? Who was the one who was that careful with my feelings?" Michiru's voice was louder and stronger than she had expected. "If you'd been nothing but a bitter person who wanted to hurt me, then why did you keep us from doing anything that could have made me feel completely betrayed when I found out the truth? Why did you hold back?"

Haruka had no response to this. Michiru could see it in the way his mouth parted to protest and then fell shut again, his forehead creased.

"I can't tell you," Michiru began, and still there was that fierceness in her voice that she'd never known she had, "how not to hate yourself. But I can tell you to stop trying to make me hate the person I love. Because he, or she, or whoever he decides that he wants to be, does exist. He's standing in front of me this very minute."

Haruka's hands were in his hair again. He stared at her from beneath them. His eyes gleamed wetly, but he was shaking his head. "You're right about one thing," he said. "You can't tell me how not to hate myself." He stood. "I have to leave, Michiru."

She felt like crying out. _What don't you understand_? she wanted to cry. _I love you, no matter what you are! Why isn't that enough?_ But the words wouldn't come to her mouth, all she could think was that if she had been Serena, then she would have known the magic words to make Haruka stay.

Haruka stood up. Michiru's heart clawed into her throat, and she blurted out, "Where are you going to go?"

Haruka didn't turn to face her. "Serena doesn't deserve to go to hell."

Michiru's heart fell back to her toes. Of course. _Of course_ it was about Serena.

"If I can find Rei and Saturn, then…"

Michiru didn't want to hear anymore. "Yes," she said wretchedly. "I see. I – I hope you save her."

"So do I," Haruka said quietly. Another moment passed. Then, with a soft "Goodbye, Michiru," she was gone.

Michiru sank slowly down onto the ground. The damp, rotting leaves clung to her legs, and she couldn't stand to feel them touching her. Couldn't stand to feel anything. She concentrated, and her last thought as her body shimmered into a million molecules of water vapor was that maybe she would stay like this forever.

L

"Dare. Dare!" Asanuma called again, louder this time, as the black-haired senior standing in front of the Infinity elevators did not turn around. When still Darien showed no sign of having heard him and the elevator doors in front of him slid open, Asanuma picked up his speed to a jog, hurrying to catch him before he could get on. "Darien!"

Darien's head was tilted back, as though he had X-ray vision and was following the other elevator car as it went up the shaft. He didn't look at Asanuma until Asanuma got close enough to grab his arm, and then his eyes, burning a piercing gold that made Asanuma think, _shit, what now?_ slid to his face.

Asanuma dropped Darien's arm. "Did you talk to Helios?"

Darien stepped into the elevator; no one followed him. Asanuma didn't blame them, Darien was giving off an even scarier aura than usual; he seemed slightly psychotic right now, his eyes drilling straight ahead as though he was staring through the walls. "Yes."

Asanuma darted into the elevator with him just as the doors slid shut. "And?"

"It's not important." Darien's head was still tilted, still following the path of that other elevator car. Asanuma knew suddenly who must be in it and felt stupid for not having realized it earlier. God, what was going on between them _now_?

He closed his bloodshot eyes and rubbed them. "Listen, Darien, I know you've got all this Serena drama going on and you guys are leaving for the track meet today and all, but Motoki's dad just got admitted back into the hospital."

Darien didn't say anything. Asanuma opened his eyes and saw that his head was tilted slightly to the side now, his eyes narrowed; Serena must have gotten off the elevator.

The elevator dinged to a stop, and the doors slid open. Darien walked out swiftly, leaving Asanuma staring after him.

L

"What do you mean, he's absent?" Their gym period had begun, and Coach was roaring into the phone at the attendance secretary. "WE LEAVE FOR NATIONALS _TODAY!_"

The secretary said something tinny and frightened-sounding into the phone, and Coach bellowed again and slammed the phone down.

"What happened? Is Haruka sick?" Kobayashi asked from where he was stretching in front of the bleachers.

"They don't know," Coach said gruffly. His jaw was clenched, and he was rubbing his temples. "No one's answering his home phone."

"He's probably sleeping," Saori said disdainfully. "It would be just like him to oversleep and miss a match. He's got no sense of responsibility."

Coach made an unintelligible noise and began pacing, tugging at his mustache and mumbling.

"One of us could go and check on him," Kobayashi offered. "Serena-chan knows where he lives, right?"

Serena, who was standing near Sei Le, as far as she could possibly be from Darien, said, "I don't, actually." Her voice was tense. Darien's face tightened.

"I'll send someone else." Coach had stopped pacing and was now looking at them all with glinting eyes. "I'm not letting any of you out of might sight." His eyes focused rather particularly on Darien and Serena as he said this.

And he was true to his word. They weren't scheduled to leave until the last class of the day, but Etoukou managed to come up with an excuse to come be in Serena's second-to-last class of the day, which Darien, by perhaps a little bit of hypnosis and a white lie that his teacher needed him to sit in the classroom to take a make-up quiz, had also managed to come sit in on.

But Serena was Senshi to the bone, just as Helios had said. She had managed to avoid Darien all morning, and now, when the class was dismissed, she managed to slip out with the crowd of students, evading both Etoukou and Darien. Etoukou let out a shout of frustration when he realized this, and Darien took advantage of his distraction to give Coach the slip himself.

He caught up to Serena on the first floor, in the school's glossy lobby. She was sitting in one of the expensive brocade chairs that were clumped in intervals along the lobby's length like little sitting-room islands.

She looked up as he approached her. "I need to ask you for something."

He didn't sit. "Tell me what happened last night."

She ignored this. "I need you to hypnotize my family so they'll go away this weekend. To the hot springs, Disneyland, wherever, it doesn't matter. I just need them to stay away from the house until I get back."

"Serena – "

But she was already gone. Blurring away like she had the night before.

Darien took off after her. He didn't catch up to her until the front steps of the Tsukino house, where she was opening the door. Kenji, Ikuko, Sammy and Rini all stood inside, with Lita leaning against the couch. When Darien entered, Lita and Rini both stiffened. Feeling himself go just as rigid, he stared at Rini, half expecting her to burst into tears again. He found himself thinking furiously toward her, _don't cry, don't you dare cry, I'll kill you if she finds out what you told me_.

"Why, Darien," Ikuko began, her voice surprised but polite, "how nice to see you – "

Darien turned glowing eyes on her without letting her finish. She went silent, her eyes glowing back, and Kenji's and Sammy's too. Sharply, he hissed, "_You're going to the hot springs for the weekend._"

There was a ripple of something, not-quite-shock and not-quite-fear, but something more like the sour taste of bile coming up a throat, from Serena. Darien turned his still-glowing eyes to her, searching. She went pale as his eyes touched hers, the skin around her lips practically green. Lita, her eyes hazy, but not quite glowing, from the effects of his hypnosis, stumbled forward to support her. Serena touched Lita's arm with shaky fingertips but stayed standing on her own.

"Keep going," she said as she stared at a point just past his shoulder.

Darien turned his eyes back to her family, though something like shame raged through him. He struggled against it. She was the one who had asked him to hypnotize them. Why must she look at him like he was some sort of monster? Everything he did, all of this, was for her. He finished, "_You will leave Rini to stay with Lita, and you will leave immediately._"

The golden light faded in their eyes. Silently, the Tsukinos turned around and walked out the front door. The door swung shut behind them, and a moment later, there was the sound of the car's engine starting and then pulling down the driveway.

Darien focused on the wallpaper and not Serena. He didn't think he could look at the moment without doing something she wouldn't forgive him for, like pinning her against the wall and never letting her out of the cage of his arms. He said shortly, "Well?"

He heard her take a deep breath. "Thank you." Then she turned, handing something to Rini. "Rini, I need you to go to Elysion. You have to stay there the whole time we're gone."

"But you said – "

"Rini!" Serena's voice was sharp, and harder than any of them had ever heard it. "This isn't something to argue about. You're going to Elysion and you're staying there. Do you understand? Do_ not move_ from Elysion until one of us comes to get you." When there was no response, her voice hardened even further. "Promise me, Rini!"

"Fine!" Rini cried. There was a sound as though she'd angrily stomped her foot, and then her aura melted away.

"Darien."

Darien looked at Serena. Her eyes didn't flinch from his, but something in her aura did. It stung, and he felt angry. He was trying to _save_ her –

"Please go to Elysion and make sure she's there." Her voice brooked no argument.

Feeling as defiant as Rini, Darien glared at her. "Fine. But you better not move while I'm gone."

It only took three seconds: one to teleport to Elysion; one to see that Rini was there, stone-faced next to Helios; and one to teleport back. But in that three seconds, Serena managed to vanish: when Darien opened his eyes on the Tsukinos' living room, it was empty except for a bemused-looking Lita.

He ran out the front door and down the street after her.

L

The national track meet was being held at a site closer to Tokyo than the regional meet had been, so the bus ride was actually much shorter than the one two weeks ago had been. But to Serena, who had just made it to the bus (and the relative safety of Coach Etoukou and their classmates, in front of whom Darien couldn't interrogate her) before Darien managed to catch up to her, the ride felt much longer.

The Twilight Flash that she had used on Diamond yesterday would have killed a youma. But the Black Moon prince was more powerful than a youma. As much as she wished to hope otherwise, she didn't think her attack would have stopped him for long. He might be following her at this moment, might have been following her all day – though she still did not understand why. Had he done all those things to her only to terrify her into giving Rini to him? Or did he really _want _her the way that her still-vague, blurry memories of him kissing and touching her made her think he did? It was so hard to remember anything he had said to her, to remember anything but the horrible, creeping terror and _wrongness_ filling every inch of her insides as he touched her.

She shivered violently, pressing deeper into the bus's leather bench. Thinking of him, and the fact that he might even now be hovering nearby, watching her, was turning her blood to ice in her veins. With all their other enemies, she had been able to sense when they were nearby. Diamond was different. By the time she even knew he was there, he had already hypnotized her. It was a horrible, powerless feeling. But she didn't _think_ that he would be able to hypnotize her again. The way she had ripped free of his control last night had felt very final. As though there was only one part of her that he had been able to stitch his threads through, and that flesh had been torn away, forever.

It still wasn't a risk that she wanted to take. Plus, it didn't matter if she could break his hold, if he had been watching her today and seen where her family went. If he followed them and used them as hostages, he wouldn't need to control her mind to make her to do whatever he wanted.

_What if he makes me take him to Rini?_

She felt as though she had suddenly looked down and found herself on the edge of a cliff, a chasm gaping beneath her. She could picture the scenario as though it had already happened: her parents, their eyes blank from being hypnotized; Diamond, holding fingertips crackling with power to Sammy's neck, telling Serena that he would kill him if she didn't bring Rini to him.

What would she do?

The answer came to her with frightening swiftness. She would do anything to keep Rini safe.

Even if it meant letting her family die?

_Even if it means letting my family die._

Rain began to lash as the bus windows, and her head fell forward, her forehead pressed against the cold glass as it shivered with the vehicle's speed. _This is wrong._

She remembered how Motoki had wondered aloud if she had a flash-form. Was this single-minded determination to protect Rini a sign of Sailor Moon's flash-form finally surfacing in her? Like Sailor Venus and her need to protect the princess _at all costs_, was it the flash-form inside her that made her cold-bloodedly decide that she would let her family die if it meant keeping the Moon Princess's daughter alive?

Her eyelids squeezed shut against the glass. No wonder Haruka had been so upset, so angry, so frightened. And Lita, before her. It was the most terrifying thing in the world to do things without knowing if it was really you doing them.

Yet she had asked Darien to hypnotize her family. To enter their minds without permission and twist them to what she wanted. Was that any different? Any different from what Diamond had done to her? The intention was different, yes, she had asked him to hypnotize her parents to keep them safe. But the flash-forms had been created to keep the princess safe, and that had been done to keep the universe safe, by ensuring it had a savior from Chaos. Did those ends justify the pain that they were all going through, that Lita and Haruka and Ami and Darien had undergone…

She fell asleep before she could decide.

L

"Serena."

She was dreaming. There was a hand in hers, and one at her waist, her own hand against cool metal armor, and they were dancing in slow circles as something hot welled up next to her eye and dripped, its trail made even hotter by the whisper against her cheek. _"Wouldn't you miss me if I left?"_

"Serena." There was another set of hands on her now, against her back and under her knees.

"SHIELDS! HURRY IT UP WITH TSUKINO!"

She jolted awake. The hands holding her, not part of the dream, tightened, bringing her closer against a warm, hard chest. Panic exploded inside her, sending her clawing for escape. She fell free and stumbled heavily onto cold leather: a bus seat. She looked up and saw, in the dim light from the hotel entrance that penetrated the bus's windows, Darien standing in the aisle. He had been carrying her and now he returned his arms to his sides. His eyes glowed faintly in the darkness, unreadable but for the pain hardening the skin around them.

"We're here," he said quietly.

Serena took her duffel bag from the seat where it had lay and swung it over her shoulder, heading for the bus door. As she brushed past him in the aisle, her eyes on her shoes, she said, "I told you not to touch me." Then she continued down the bus steps to where Coach was waiting expectantly, slapping his clipboard impatiently against his knee.

"Different room arrangements this time," he announced as he corralled them inside and got room keys from the front desk, which was surrounded by coaches and athletes from other schools, most of them in track suits. "Two to a room, so that means Saori with Tsukino, Sei Le with Kobayashi, and Shields with me."

Pushing her rumpled bangs out of her eyes, Serena glanced around at the others, her eyes coming to rest on Darien. He didn't seem to have heard Coach's words at all, or if he had, he wasn't reacting to them. He was still just watching her intently, his face tense.

Serena looked away. She was tired, and anxious, and past the point of thinking that she deserved the way Darien had treated her. The proud part of her said that her anger was because he had disillusioned her the same way that Haruka had, by not saving innocent an innocent civilian when he hadn't come to save the human youma she had found in the alley. But the honest part of her said that her anger was really because he hadn't protected her from Diamond. It was because the boy who had always been able to tell when she had so much as a hangnail hadn't bothered to notice that an alien man had been creeping into her room each night. It was because the boy who had told her that she wasn't a carefree angel people could take their feelings out on had ended up doing that very thing.

It was because he had promised to go to hell with her, and instead her life had turned into hell as he pretended she didn't exist.

Her fingers pressed against the locket at her neck. Then she dropped her hand back to her side and followed Saori into the elevator.

L

"I think that is enough for tonight, Hime-sama." Helios touched Rini's shoulder lightly. "It is nearing dawn in the world outside. You should sleep."

Rini shrugged off his fingers and continued to funnel power into the tree trunk under her hands. The tree stretched taller and taller, the shadows around her getting darker and darker as more and more leaves sprouted from its branches. It was energy-draining, all this tree-growing, and for hours now, she had been longing for the moment when the last of her energy would drip from her fingertips and she would be able to slump into unconsciousness and not have to think about anything.

"Rini-hime…" Helios murmured in concern. "Please, tell me what is wrong?"

_"What's wrong? What did you tell him_?" That was what Lita had said, over and over that morning once they reached her apartment. Rini had wanted to tell her, so badly, but already she had been regretting telling Darien. She had let it burst out of her because she had just been so angry, seeing him lurking outside Serena's empty room with his impatient, demanding aura, knowing he was probably the reason Serena wasn't in her room, that he had probably scared her away again, and thinking, couldn't he at least let her sleep in peace in her room, couldn't he give her _something_ since he had already torn her apart by ignoring her; and she had just been so angry that she wanted him to _hurt_, she wanted him to feel pain and guilt like she had been feeling, and she wanted it to be _his fault _–

"Rini-hime," Helios said quietly again, and she realized she had begun to cry again. "Please, you need rest. Everything will be better when you have slept."

"Go away."

Helios drew in a sharp, pained breath, but Rini didn't care. She wanted to be left alone in her pain, to wallow in it, and she certainly didn't want to be told by Darien's cowardly Elysian priest that everything was going to be alright when she knew that Serena and Asanuma were going to die. She heard him sucking in a breath to begin to say something more, and she jerked her head up to glare at him, already feeling her eyes beginning to glow.

"_Go_ –" she began angrily, then realized what she was doing. Horror and guilt rushed through her, staining her like ink, "–away," she finished in a whisper, her eyes back to normal, no power behind her voice.

Helios left, and whether he knew what she had done, she did not know, for she could not look at him. Her insides were racing with shame and terror. Hand shaking, she reached out beside her, scrabbling for the knapsack she had brought with her to Elysion. But the object she had sought from it, the snow globe that Asanuma had made her for Christmas, wasn't there, and she remembered with an unpleasant ripple that it was still in Serena's bedroom, under her pillow on the floor.

Her insides churned harder, as though they were a snow globe that someone had seized and shaken. She wanted the snow globe. She needed it. She couldn't have said why, but she did. She needed to see the little finger-high version of herself, with its Serena-bright smile, its Senshi fuku like Serena's, and its odangoes like Serena, as though Asanuma as he made it had looked at her and seen in her the same goodness Serena had, as though he believed that she had the potential to be like Serena, and not like…

Rini's mind didn't finish the thought. Instead, it clenched tightly, and when she blinked, she was in Serena's room.

It was empty and filled with moonlight, the window curtains still wide open. It made Rini realize that the whole house was empty: Serena was at the track meet, and Ikuko, Kenji, and Sammy were long gone to the hot springs. It sent a shiver down her spine as she reached under her pillow for the snow globe and put it in her knapsack.

Maybe it was a shadow at the corner of her eye, or the shiver down her spine, or maybe even something entirely different, but something made Rini stiffen and look out the window.

There was a human youma on the street outside.

_You've got to be kidding me_, was her first shaky thought, and the second was, _I can't. Serena would kill me._

But Serena would never just ignore a youma. Especially not when it could hurt someone – and Rini could see, now, a car's headlights coming down the road. The youma was drawing itself up straight, its arms lifting as though to gesture it forward. She could run downstairs to the phone to call Lita and hope she got here in time to rescue the people in the car – or she could run down into the street herself and use the trick Helios had begun to teach her just that afternoon of growing a tree around a youma in order to trap them in its trunk.

Rini chose the second option.

L

_At last._

Lanai landed on the ground. All it took was the tips of the green Terran grass brushing the bottoms of her feet for her leg muscles to tremble and give way beneath her. She crouched on the ground, panting, and twisted around to face the High Senshi presence she felt approaching behind her.

The Senshi lit lightly on the ground, much more gracefully than Lanai had. But her legs trembled, and so did her hands, knotted in front of her pleated pink fuku.

"S-Sailor Lanai?" she stammered.

It should have made Lanai laugh. In fact, had she come across such a frilly-looking Senshi in any other situation, she would have fallen on her back and laughed until her stomach ached.

In this situation, her face paled in the dawn light, and she said quietly, "Sailor Mnemosyne."

The girl, lifting one hand to fiddle nervously with the curled pink pigtails hanging on either side of her head, smiled nervously. Lanai did not return the smile. Sailor Mnemosyne was one of the youngest and most unassuming of the High Senshi – hardly worthy, in fact, if one went solely by her combat skills, of being called a High Senshi. But her sister, the Senshi Lethe, was one of the most feared. She had been rescued from the ruins of her system with her sister by Sailor Phi, one of Galaxia's lieutenants, and trained by that Senshi herself. At Phi's side, she had learned how to be powerful, efficient, and ruthless.

And she had the power to remove memories.

"G-greetings, sister." Mnemosyne ducked her head as she spoke. Her butterfly wings twitched repeatedly behind her, as though she wanted to be back in the air.

"Greetings, sister," Lanai replied wearily. There was no warmth in her voice; Mnemosyne's presence could mean nothing good to her. At best, it meant that Galaxia didn't trust Lanai to capture Serena and Darien's child and bring her back. "You were sent to follow me?"

Mnemosyne's eyes were as restless as her wings. They darted away from Lanai's and then back again. "I – " She broke off as her eyes broke away from Lanai's once more, and widened. Her face lit up. "Lethe!"

Lanai caught her breath. Forcing her face to stay blank and her fists not to clench, she swallowed and turned around.

Had she not just seen Mnemosyne, Lanai might not have recognized the person walking toward them as Sailor Lethe. With her leanly muscled build and wearing male clothing – track pants and a white t-shirt with INFINITY ACADEMY emblazoned across it – she looked like a teenage boy, not a High Senshi. But her long, straight eyebrows were the same as her sister's, and the side part of her hair and the way that it curled at the end of her ponytail were the same as well.

And when Mnemosyne cried again, "Lethe!" and broke into a run toward her, she held up a hand with a cold authority that was all High Senshi.

"Remember your orders, Mnemosyne!" she said sharply.

The pink-clad Senshi froze and retreated guiltily back toward Lanai, her wings twitching.

Lanai's own wings were tense against her shoulder blades. "How long have you been here?"

"Since you were summoned," Lethe said. "Did you really think the Council would leave Serenity unsupervised?"

"Where is she?" Lanai demanded.

Lethe's lips curved upward. "Why the commanding tone, Senshi Lanai? If I told the High Council how lax you've been with your charge, you would be stripped of your rank in milliseconds."

"Senshi Lethe," Lanai said warningly.

"You weren't even following infiltration protocol." Lethe took a step closer. Her guise of a Terran male fell from her and revealed a fuku identical to Mnemosyne's, in green instead of pink. "The rule is to disguise ourselves as males when we go to other planets, Senshi Lanai. Did you really think a penciled-on mustache would suffice?"

Lanai's blood boiled. She had been a High Senshi before these two were even born. Curse Phi and Chi for finding them after their twin planets were destroyed. They should never have been allowed to become High Senshi. There was a reason that Senshi whose planets had died were not allowed to keep their rank, and it was not only because the Senshi usually died protecting their planet. It was because a Senshi without a home world to be loyal to, without a population to protect and belong to and answer to, was too great a power too easily influenced by outside influences. Sailor Phi and Sailor Chi were judgmental, hide-bound reactionaries on the High Council, and Lethe had clearly absorbed the sense of superiority and contempt that they had raised her to possess.

Lanai bit down on her tongue, though, and managed to say only, "How unfortunate for you that it is the Council's place to judge, not yours. When my mission is completed, I will go before them to be judged. Until that time, I am under direct orders from Galaxia-sama. Tell me where Serena is."

Lethe's eyes glinted when Lanai said _Serena_, and Lanai knew immediately that she had made a mistake. The rule of disguise was not the only one she had broken during this years-long mission. She also should not have become close to the Moon Princess's reincarnation. Not close enough to consider her as a person instead of a tool or a threat.

Lethe opened her mouth, undoubtedly to comment on Lanai's transgression. But before she could, something happened.

A wind whooshed off the ocean. It stank of power: a sharp, bright power, like white glitter scattered through the air. There was no question of who it could belong to.

A power this great could only belong to a child born of Serena and Darien.

Lanai was in the air again before she even knew it, her wings flapping as powerfully as if she hadn't just completed a months-long journey through deep space. Peripherally, she saw the two twin Senshi shooting into the air after her, but her attention was on the stretch of water separating this island from the one where the child was. Where – her senses stretched out and recoiled – a repulsive, Chaos-tainted presence also pulsed.

The flight took less than ten minutes, but it was enough time for Lanai to decipher what she was feeling. This wrong, stomach-turning presence that was youma but not was similar to something she had sensed only once before, on a planet in the Papillon System. The Chaos forces there had enslaved the natives, and after a great deal of insurgency in the slave camps, begun to poison their water sources with youma parasites. The parasites took on the Papillon natives' bodies as hosts, turning them into little more than youma themselves.

That biotechnology could not be here, on Earth, Lanai thought in near-panic as they sped down through the clouds toward the familiar streets of Tokyo. She had disposed of that biotechnician and his parasite queen herself.

But the sensation was unmistakable. And when they reached the street where the two auras – one unbearably powerful and the other unbearably human – Lanai could not deny what she saw.

It was the first thing she looked at. Standing in the middle of the street with unconscious bodies all around it, it was human-shaped, even wearing human clothes: jeans and some sort of sweatshirt. But blue energy streamed from the bodies to its head, which was a horrible sight to behold. Streaked beneath the skin with dark blue as though bruised or beginning to decay, the head had no face at all, only looked like some horrible cartoon parody of a person who had eaten a lemon so sour that his face had puckered into its center.

Then there was a beam of dark green energy burning through its head, and the entire creature burst into chunks of gore.

Lanai wheeled around in the air. Lethe's finger was still pointed at the youma. Mnemosyne, beside her, had her face hidden in Lethe's shoulder and was whimpering softly.

Lethe met Lanai's eyes unflinchingly. "What, do you not kill youma now?"

Lanai pressed her lips together. Then she looked past Lethe, down to the ground. Her eyes landed on the child there, and shock rippled through her like an earthquake.

The little girl resembled Darien far more than she did Serena: the bones of her face were sharp, and the arch of her eyebrows and shape of her lips were suspicious and combative. But Lanai caught a glimpse of Serena in the way the girl's eyes flicked around her in concern at the unconscious people on the ground, and the determination as she turned to face the three Senshi, her feet planted firmly. And in the trembling anger as she looked at Lethe.

"That was a human," she said. Her voice trembled and her aura buzzed like Darien's did when he was furious.

Lethe looked at her for a moment, then let her gaze fall away as though the child, and her words, were beneath her notice. She looked expectantly at Lanai. "We're waiting, Senshi Lanai."

Lanai's stomach was a cold pit. She looked back at the girl, who was watching them with cold fury. That cold fury, and the consequent absence of fear, should have made her feel more certain about what she had to do: immobilize the child, who was clearly too powerful to be allowed to exist, and take her to Galaxia to be disposed of. But she could see Serena in that gaze, the same determination that had burned in her as she tried all those long afternoons to learn how to protect her princess and her friends.

"We weren't sent here just to observe you, Senshi Lanai," Lethe said loudly. "We are here to make sure you follow Galaxia-sama's orders concerning the child. Will you act, or will we have to take care of both of you ourselves?"

Lanai snapped back to herself. What was she doing? This was her mission, entrusted to her by no less than the venerated Galaxia-sama herself. "I will act," she said quickly. She took a step forward.

The little girl's eyes were wide, and her power was humming even more loudly now, like Darien's on the day he had told Lanai to stay away from Serena. But there was pain etched across her face, as though she was swallowing her own scalding power, binding herself instead, and that reminded Lanai of Serena.

But no matter who it came from, or who it belonged to, power was power.

_"…a child whose existence has already begun to cause destruction. Two entirely destroyed planets of which we know and perhaps dozens more…"_

_ "…eventually she would become another Chaos and subjugate our systems to her. You understand this?"_

Lanai lifted her hands. The child stared back at her, eyes still wide. The first pounds of fear entered her aura. Lanai didn't know how much, or if it all, Serena loved this child, but the sight of those wide blue eyes, so like Serena's, filled her with the need to do anything she could, say anything could, to ease that fear.

All she could do, as she lifted her hands higher and fed power into them, was say gently, "I promise it won't hurt."

L

Diamond had intended to kill the youma he had released in front of the child princess in order to win her favor. But events conspired much better for him, as though the gods themselves had decided to throw their power behind his cause. He drew further back into the shadows, carefully cloaking his aura as the three High Senshi lit upon the ground in front of him. He had immediately recognized their auras; he had fought their kind for months before coming to the past with the Wiseman. He watched and waited for the best possible moment to reveal himself.

And, suddenly, it arrived.

"I promise it won't hurt."

Diamond sprang out.

L

Rini squeezed her eyes shut. In her mind, she heard Serena saying how important it was for people with power to be able to control it. She ground her teeth together, fighting to control it as she felt the Senshi's power exploding and hurtling toward her –

Then arms grabbed her and seized her up. Rini cried out, her arms locking around her rescuer's neck as the power inside her jolted and made another bid for escape. Her eyes jarred open.

The hair against her face was silver, not black.

Her insides twisted. _Prince Diamond_. She wrenched herself backward, but the arms didn't release her.

Power slammed into them, a dark rusty red the same color as the brown-haired Senshi's eyes. Rini clenched Prince Diamond's tunic despite herself, and if she had not been so dazed by the impact of Lanai's attack slamming them into the side of a building, she would have felt shocked by how carefully Diamond held her, shoving her head under his chin and hunching around her to protect her from the impact.

Power blast after power blast slammed into them, until at last, Prince Diamond lifted his head and roared, "_Enough!_"

The brown-haired Senshi went abruptly still. Her eyes blank and glowing, she stopped in the middle of summoning another blast, the red power evaporating in her hands. Behind her, the two almost-identical Senshi inhaled sharply, the pink one cringing behind the green one.

The prince stood. "Do you dare?" he said to them. His voice was low but carrying.

"Your Eye has no power over _us_," said the green one.

"No, it does not." Diamond lowered Rini to the ground gently without looking away from the Senshi. "But do you think that this princess will stand back and let you kill her without a fight?"

The green Senshi looked at Rini. Her eyes were dark and cold and full of a hatred like nothing Rini had ever seen before, even in Darien's eyes. She took a step back, her knapsack brushing Diamond's pant leg.

There was a jolt. She felt him grab her shoulder, and then everything went black.

Then, abruptly, there was light again. Rini stumbled away from the hand at her shoulder, stumbling to the ground, squinting through the dim twilight as she concentrated to run to Elysion.

But familiar slides and monkey bars met her eyes, and she realized that Diamond had only brought her to the park, not to some Black Moon hideout.

"Princess," he said from behind her.

Rini scrambled to her feet and turned to look at him, her feet apart and muscles coiled and ready the way Lita had taught her. But the prince looked tired, even clammy, in the orange light from the street lamp, and Rini felt…not very afraid of him.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

Rini said nothing. Only watched him suspiciously, reminding herself that this was the prince who must have ordered Asanuma's death.

He let out a breath. "I must ask something of you."

_This_ was not what Rini had expected at all. She had only glimpsed the Black Moon prince once before, when his subordinates attacked her and Asanuma's house, and she only knew of his name and appearance from Asanuma's brief mentions of what he had heard the Sisters say. Her image of him had been of someone cruel and cold, not someone who would save her from High Senshi and ask if she was alright and then ask her in a pleading voice to help him.

But she stayed tense, prepared to run. "Why would I help someone who wants to give me to Chaos?"

"Not me. The Wiseman." The prince looked tired and even a little scared. "He has us under his control. My people, my planet, my ship."

"Spare me," said Rini, all the more venomously because her animosity was weakening. A voice in her head that sounded like Serena was saying, _what if he's telling the truth?_ Then she couldn't just ignore him. "Rubeus killed my Asanuma."

"No." The prince shook his head. "He tried to protect you."

Despite herself, Rini remembered how, when they had been in the cafeteria on New Year's, Rubeus had held onto her, keeping her from being sucked into the Wiseman's power.

"The Wiseman forced us to come here, to the past, to get you," Diamond said. His eyes were as earnest as his voice. "It was us or you. I had a whole planet to protect, princess." He paused and murmured, in a soft, wistful voice that reminded Rini of Serena, "I still do."

Then he lifted his eyes. "And I came here now, alone, to find you because you are the only one who can help me free my people from the Wiseman."

Rini wanted to cross her arms and shake her head. She wanted to say, "Why should I risk anything for you or your people?" But even as she opened her mouth, she found herself thinking that Serena would never say such a thing. Serena would try to help the prince and his people.

_And Serena's going to die_, she argued with herself. Maybe _this_ was what would lead to Serena's death, her determination to help everybody even when it put her in danger!

Maybe it was true. Probably it was. But that wouldn't stop Serena from trying anyway. She always acted like she had some debt to the world that she needed to repay, and suddenly, remembering what she herself had done to Motoki, Rini understood the feeling. Her fingers curled into fists at her side, and she looked up at Diamond. He was sitting at the end of the slide, his face cradled in his hands, watching her pleadingly.

"What," she began, "could I do?"

"The only one with the power to break the Wiseman's control over us is the Moon Princess," the prince said in a low voice. "No one knows where the Moon Princess is in this time, and in the future, the High Senshi will not let her come to help us. You have seen what they are like." His eyes met hers, and she remembered the pure hatred in the green High Senshi's eyes. "But there is one place where the Moon Princess is known to be, and without the High Senshi's claws in her yet."

Rini waited silently.

"In the Silver Millennium. I need to go one thousand years in the past to find the Moon Princess, and you are the only one with enough power to take me there."

L

The instant that the silver-haired man vanished with the child, so did his control over Lanai's body. She whipped to her feet and pivoted just in time to hurl out a wall of sheer power.

It slammed into what looked like nothing but air – air that suddenly flickered black. Dirty yellow power crackled against Lanai's red energy, and then the illusion collapsed, revealing the creature whose Chaos stench had reached her nose as she stood frozen by the man's hypnosis. It was a Chaos minion, incredibly strong, he had to be at least as high in the hierarchy as Kisenian Blossom, she thought, gritting her teeth against the sheer weight of his aura.

_"So you've encountered my kind before, Senshi,"_ it said, the cowl of its cloak rippling in time with its voice. The crystal ball in its hands pulsed. _"But it appears that your companions have not."_

Lanai risked a quick glance over her shoulder. For all Lethe's bradavo, the younger Senshi had fallen to her knees under the weight of the creature's aura, her hands splayed on the ground to brace her from falling any lower. Mnemosyne huddled into her side, her head nearly brushed the ground, she felt the weight so strongly. But there was power emanating from both of them, green and pink, stretching out form with Lanai's energy wall a prison for the creature. Lethe's head shifted, and she could see how her jaw was clenched, perspiration trickling down her face as she struggled to keep her concentration.

"All the more impressive that they're managing to hold you, then," Lanai said. She felt a bead of sweat trickle down her own neck: though the creature was floating there serenely as though content to stay in their prison, his aura was pounding against the walls in time with the pulsing of his crystal ball. They wouldn't be able to hold the walls up for much longer than ten minutes, she guessed…

Her mind raced. What did he want? Was he trying to escape simply to be free, or for another reason? There was a haste, an urgency to his aura. Then it struck her: the child. Of course. He wanted Endymion and Serenity's daughter.

Lanai flung out her senses as far as she dared without letting her hold on her part of the wall falter. She could just sense the child's aura, by the other man's.

_Run_, she tried to tell it, as the creature struck the walls with his strongest blow yet. She had to run, this Chaos creature couldn't be allowed to have her, not with all her power –

The creature lashed out again, and their prison disintegrated. The backlash of her own severed energy rushed in on Lanai before she could yank away, and her world went black.

L

"_You are the only one with enough power to take me there."_

"I can't," Rini said instantly. That was one of the only things Asanuma had managed to tell her, before she escaped back in time, that she had to be careful not to do or say anything that could change the timeline. Going to the Silver Millennium and meeting her mother – that would change it beyond comprehension.

"You were told not to change time," the prince said. His eyes were intent, almost feverish, on hers. "But in our time, your Shittenou is dead…and so is Serena."

Rini felt as though he had slammed a bolt of Jupiter's lightning straight into her chest.

"How could we make this timeline any worse than it already his?" he whispered. Sorrow strained his voice. "Things have happened that should never have to pass. My planet is near destroyed, my people controlled, your loved ones dead, and you – your parents should never have had you."

Rini's eyes went painfully wide.

"Serena," he said, and the whisper was like a prayer. "Serena was the one meant to have you."

There was a moment of quiet, and then he said, "If we go to the past, we can make it so that she will."

The world around Rini seemed to have slowed down, from the whispering night breeze to the creaking playground swings to the warm blood in her veins. It was like being in a dream, everything slow and liquid and _possible_. They could change the past so that Serena could be her mother.

They could change the past so Serena could _live_.

"Well?"

She looked up. In Diamond's metallic eyes, she could see her own mirrored, burning with fierce desire. She reached out, and he caught her hand in one of his own. In the other, he held a long silver key so powerful it made the air around it waver and warp.

She said, "What do I need to do?"

He said, "Give me your power."

Her eyes began to glow, and, after a moment, so did the key.

And just as the Wiseman burst out of a void just behind them, they disappeared. His scream of rage tore through the city.

L

A few kilometers away, Asanuma jerked awake. His eyes blinking rapidly in the dimness and taking in the room around him that was most certainly _not_ his bedroom, he wondered where the hell he was before remembering that he was at Mikai's. He'd fallen asleep on the other Shittenou's living room couch when he got back from his patrol only – he checked his watch – three hours ago.

Feeling much more awake and antsy than anyone who had only gotten three hours should be, Asanuma swung his legs off the couch and sat there for a minute, rubbing his eyes. One hand scrubbed distractedly at his chin, feeling the slightest prickle. He'd never been the kind of guy who got five o'clock shadow, but what with everything going on, he kept forgetting to shave. First there had been all the Darien and Serena drama, then Motoki's dad being re-admitted to the hospital yesterday, and on top of that, there was still the patrolling for him, Mikai, and Lita to worry about.

He stood up, stretching, and made his way into Mikai's dining room/living room/Batcave, clapping his hands together. "Okay, Kentaro, what've we got?"

Mikai snapped up straight in his desk chair, swiping the side of his mouth. From the pool of drool gleaming on top of his mouse pad and the red imprint his watch had left across his cheek, Asanuma could tell that he had fallen asleep, too.

"Let's see…uhhh…" Mikai rubbed his face much the way Asanuma had, his palm rasping against the dark stubble on his cheeks. "Nothing new. Still no youma attacks, just the one Serena told you guys about that had six arms…was it supposed to be insectoid or arachnoid, do you think?"

"Who cares? At least it was different." Asanuma leaned back against one of the desks, closing his eyes again. "It seems like the only human youma they have are all those electrical ones, or that glowing one…you'd think they'd mix it up a little, put in some ones with ice or fire or something, like us and the Senshi have."

Mikai didn't say anything in reply. Asanuma cracked open an eyelid to glare at him. He didn't appreciate being ignored.

But Mikai was staring at him. His eyes were wide, his hands splayed open at his sides as though to grab something. "Like _us_! Asanuma, what if the reason none of the human youma have had fire or ice powers is because the Senshi with those powers aren't here?"

Asanuma lurched forward. "Their blood." His eyes were as wide as Motoki's. "The Infinity people have blood from Toki and Lita _and _Serena and Darien. They took it during their physicals and when they got hurt during their extracurriculars! That would explain the lightning youma – and the one that glowed like Serena's Twilight Flash – and the six-armed one's like some sort of failed animal transformation – "

Mikai said a very bad word and swung back to his computer, beginning to type something furiously.

Asanuma's cell phone rang. He saw Motoki's name on the screen and snapped it open. "Toki, guess what –"

But Motoki was already saying something. "Asanuma, they just put my dad into critical care." He was crying, his voice just short of a sob. "I can't come tonight, I'm sorry, I'll talk to you guys later – "

"Toki, wait! Is there anything – can we – do you want us to get Dare? He'll come – "

"He already tried before." Motoki sucked in a wet breath. "Dr. Tomoe's here, and he's worked miracles before. Maybe – look, I'll just – I'll call you later, okay?" He hung up.

Leaving Asanuma staring at the wall. His eyes were blank, his mind racing. It was the first time he'd heard the name of Furuhata-san's doctor.

Tomoe. _Tomoe_. Where had he heard that name before?

The girl. The girl Rei took from Senator Hino's house. Sailor Saturn. Hino had said her name was Hotaru Tomoe.

A doctor who had been such a miracle worker for Motoki's dad had sold his daughter to a corrupt politician?

His hand found the back of Mikai's chair, gripped it. "Mikai, look up the name Hotaru Tomoe."

Mikai shot him a harried glance but typed it in, his fingers like lightning on the keyboard. Several results popped up, newspaper and journal articles. Mikai clicked on the newspaper ones.

Hotaru Tomoe, aged seven, had survived a house fire with multiple third-degree burns…. Her father, Dr. Soichi Tomoe had to pulled away from the wreckage by firefighters…

There was another link, more recent, from only that summer. It was a set of pictures from the social section of the newspaper that featured weddings. Newly married couple Dr. Soichi Tomoe and Kaori Knight posed with Tomoe's daughter, Hotaru.

"That's Infinity's principal!" Asanuma shouted. Disbelief pounded in him. "She's been giving him our _blood_!"

Mikai minimized the window, already going back to a spreadsheet and scrolling down, muttering rapidly under his breath. "Tomoe already had samples of Darien's blood from their doctor's appointments over the summer. And Motoki's dad found out about his tumor at the beginning of the school year." He turned and looked at Asanuma. "A tumor forms when cells replicate at an unnatural speed. Whose power does that sound like?"

"Darien's," said Asanuma, remembering how rapidly Darien's skin always sewed up when the Golden Crystal healed a wound. "But the Golden Crystal always _healed_ –"

"It accelerates growth," said Mikai. "And Darien's probably not exactly human, I bet his body's adapted to be able to control the crystal's power. But a normal human body like Furuhata-san's wouldn't be able to shut off the mitosis on its own."

"God!" Asanuma kicked the couch. "I KNEW there was a reason we all got into Infinity! Fuck fuck _fuck_ – "

Mikai was on his feet, yanking on his jacket. "We've gotta call Darien and get to the hospital."

Asanuma was already out the door.

L

L

**A/N:** Feedback on the characters? About Dare, Sere, and Rini goes without saying, but what about the others? Sapphire and the High Senshi? Sorry that this is a bit of a bridge chapter; after this the final action should begin full-tilt.


	36. Chapter 36

**A/N**: Oh, you (un)lucky readers. Yet again, the chapter count has changed. There will now be a total of either 39 or 40 chapters. It's like STC has been exposed to the Golden Crystal, it just keeps growing…

In other news, I have created a Yahoo group for STC to keep you guys updated. If you would like to be added, please send your e-mail address to eightsword(at)gmail(dot)com. I'll post more details on the STC site. Which, speaking of, has a **new Sue** **sketch**! Please check it out! It's my favorite one so far.

To make sure no one is confused by Diamond and Queen Selenity's lines in this chapter, monarchs often refer to themselves in the plural: "we," "our," "us."

**Thank you** to everyone for their reviews! I reread and treasure every single one. They act as my Patronus against the Dementor that is chemistry!

Last but not least, **all bow to Jade** for her awesomeness!

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Chapter Thirty-Six: Senshi to the Bone

L

Darien gripped his cell phone with white-knuckled hands, nausea mounting inside him as he listened to Mikai's explanation of what Tomoe had done. He should have listened more closely to Asanuma the day before. He should have looked, he should have noticed, he should have _known_ –

"So how long will it take you to get here?" That was Asanuma's voice, hard and brusque. Mikai must have the speaker-phone on.

Darien's eyes flicked across the packed bleachers and the knots of runners stretching with their coaches. His eyes met Serena's. They were underlined with deep bags just like his own; clearly, they had both stayed awake, waiting for the Black Moon man who hadn't come. But despite her obvious tiredness, Serena still looked feverishly alert, watching him from where she stood a little away from Coach and the others as though she knew that something was wrong.

"Give us an hour," Darien said into the phone before snapping it shut. He strode toward Serena, and she watched him approach. She did not step back even when he stepped close to her and lowered his head and his voice so that he could murmur the news to her without anyone overhearing. Despite his proximity, it was not hard to ignore the warmth of her and the sharp, too-strong scent of the sports deodorant she and Saori both used during practices and meets; the thought of what his blood_–his_ blood–had done to Furuhata-san filled his mind, squeezing out every other thought.

Except the thought of what Rini had told him. That was inescapable.

He found himself gripping Serena's arm. "Tomoe's been using our blood to experiment. Principal Knight's his wife, she's been slipping him our blood so that he can make those human youma. Mikai thinks Furuhata-san might have been one of his first experiments with my blood from when he was subbing in for Dr. Takeuchi."

The skin around Serena's mouth tensed. "How?"

"When I heal with the crystal, it's really just forcing my cells to mitose at an accelerated rate." Darien scanned the track field behind her as he talked, mapping a route for them to slip away without being noticed. "In someone who doesn't have the power to stop them from mitosing when no more cells are needed, the cells would keep multiplying and build up into a mass of cells. A tumor."

He looked down at her. Her face was pale, her lips tightly together as though she was biting down on them. Her voice was tight. "Can we do anything?"

Darien looked back at her. "We're going to try."

Something changed in her eyes, and then both of them were moving, half running across the track field. The spectators in the bleachers began to go quiet, clearly wondering if the races had started without them realizing, and then Coach Etoukou was letting out a shout and barreling after them, hollering, "SHIELDS AND TSUKINO! WHERE THE HECK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING?" And then he was shouting something else that they couldn't hear, and something that sounded like "Sei Le, catch them–Saori! Where's Sei Le?" and then Darien and Serena were pounding into the parking lot, disappearing from sight behind the huge vans and buses that had brought all the athletes to the athletic complex.

A single sweep of his senses assured Darien that the only people in the area were two bus drivers sleeping soundly in their vehicles. Still running, he reached down into himself to transform.

Serena was still keeping pace with him, her feet slapping the pavement. He handed her his cell phone. "Hold this." He closed his eyes and felt the muscles deep inside his back coil and burst. "And hold on."

Membranous wings erupted from between his shoulder blades. Wind summoned by the part of his mind that was not focused on the transformation whooshed under the wings' fragile flesh, thrusting him up into the air, pushing his body parallel to the ground. Darien reached down with hands that were now more claws than fingers and caught Serena by the fabric of her hoodie. His muscles trembled with her weight for a moment before the wind pushed him up again, and then they were climbing sharply into the air.

Serena stayed very still in his tenuous grip as she dangled ten, then twenty meters above the ground, as though she could sense that he wasn't in control quite yet. In the part of his mind that was not registering the wind strength and calculating how high they would need to go – how hard he would need to flap these wings, to keep them unseen, whether it would take less energy simply to summon clouds and fog to conceal them – he was thinking _what if this is it? What if this is when it happens?_ He clenched the fabric of her hoodie tighter in his claw-hands, wishing he transform her into a flower like Rini and put her in his Subspace Pocket where nothing could ever touch her.

Within a few minutes, his flapping stabilized, balancing with a warm stream of air that he had summoned to push up against the underside of his wings. As the highway became a car-beaded ribbon below them, he transferred Serena with infinite care from her dangling position to a bridal hold in his arms. She stiffened but wrapped her arms around his neck to lessen the weight his arms would have to hold.

Darien flew gradually higher, trying to lessen the chances that they would be seen. Occasionally they went through wisps of cloud, and they would flinch and shiver as the chilly water vapor soaked through their clothing and coated their exposed skin.

Suddenly Serena let out a yelp. Darien's phone had begun to vibrate where she had put it in her hoodie's front pocket. Freeing one cold hand from his neck, she pulled it out and flipped it open. With the air rushing past them and snatching away all sounds, she had to shout, "Hello? Hello? Helios?"

Manipulating the wind around them and maintaining his transformation, plus keeping secure hold of Serena, took too much concentration from Darien for him to be able to transform his ears to be sensitive enough to hear what Helios was saying. But it wasn't hard for him to sense the blood draining from Serena's face and her heart beginning to pound hard.

"What?" he demanded, slowing his wings so quickly that his shoulder blades seemed almost to wrench out of their joints.

Now that the wind wasn't rushing past them so fast, he could hear Helios's voice through the phone. " – have searched everywhere for her, all over Elysion, and – "

Darien's blood went the same direction as Serena's had. Distantly, he felt his slowed wing motions falter, and the stomach-in-mouth sensation of them plummeting.

"Wings!" Serena's face was white, her voice sharp. Darien's wings automatically began to work again, the same way his body had listened to her when she had shouted that ridiculous string of animal names in Elysion the first time he had an animal transformation.

"How long ago?" Serena demanded.

"Half an hour?" Helios made a sound of despair. "Perhaps more? I am so sorry, Darien-sama–she wanted to be left alone, I did not think she would get into any mischief without Bujiro there to goad her–"

"Enough, Helios." Darien cut him off. Serena had gone very still, too still, against him. The last time she had felt so tense was–

Shit. The man from the Black Moon was after Rini. _That_ was why Serena had been so adamant that she stay in Elysion. It was so obvious, but Darien had been too panicked about Serena to think about what, or who, else the Black Moon bastard might want.

"Helios!" he shouted so that the priest would hear him. "Get Buji and have him help you look for her!"

Through the phone, Helios let out another moan. But whatever he was about to say was cut off, for directly ahead of Darien and Serena, power exploded. White and yellow-gray, it billowed out across the sky like a mushroom cloud from an atomic bomb. The white aura was Rini's. The other–

"We have to go." Serena's voice was shrill, panicked and too loud, like a deaf person talking at an unnatural volume because they couldn't hear their own voice. Her heart was beating so fast in her chest that Darien could feel it pounding against his own, as it if was trying to leap into him and hide. She began to thrash in his arms, trying to free herself, and Darien had to snatch at her to keep her from falling. "We have to _go_!"

"Helios!" Darien shouted as he struggled to fly and hold onto Serena at the same time. "Where are Asanuma and the others? Did you contact them?"

"They do not know, Darien-sama! They are at the hospital with Bujiro – "

But anything else that Helios had to say was lost. For Serena had clawed free of Darien's grasp and was plummeting toward the grid work of suburban streets below them. Darien's heart, and the whole world around him, seemed to stop for a long moment. The only thought in his head was _this can't be it– _

Then he let out a bellow and lunged for her, his wings spreading and then flattening against his body as his muscles tried to figure out what to do. But they were too slow, he wasn't going to make it even though he was hurtling downward so rapidly his eyes were tearing–

Psychometrically, he felt the impact of Serena's feet slamming into a house roof. But it wasn't followed by the sound of her crashing through the tile or of her bones crunching or even a cry of pain. One minute, she was landing, and the next, she was transformed and running, sprinting down the rooftop's length, and leaping to the next roof.

He crashed onto the roof next to her, making a stumbling landing as his body reabsorbed the membranous wings with a too-slow, slurping sound, leaving behind ragged holes in his tuxedo through which he could feel the icy night air. "Serena!"

She didn't answer, or stop. They leapt the next rooftop in unison, their feet making muted thuds as they landed, and Darien lunged, transforming in mid-air.

He tackled her to the ground with a crash that must surely have made the family to whom the house belonged think that Santa's sled had made a crash landing on their roof. But even before Moon's back slammed into the tile, she was clawing at Mask, flailing to get free. It was an eerie repeat of that night when Asanuma had died and Rini's power had exploded, nearly swallowing them, except that this time, he could hear her fierce shrieks and see the wild look in her eyes.

"Let me go!" she shrieked. The stone in her tiara was glowing, a bright angry red like a warning siren. Was she going to _attack_ him? "I have to get to her!"

"Serena! Damn it!" The power in her tiara was building, focused at him. Mask pinned her arms to her side, wanting to shake her and yet not daring to. Feeling her thin body twist against his hold was like holding a fragile baby for the first time; he was terrified that she was going to twist right out of his arms and dash her head open on the ground.

And yet, in all the panic squeezing his mind, a part of him was noting with relief that the Moon Princess wouldn't be fighting him like this, wouldn't have fought free of his grip in the air to escape him and get to Rini. The Moon Princess in his dreams clung to him and cried when she was frightened, begged _him_ to get the crystal instead of trying to get to it herself.

_Serena-sama is Senshi to the bone_.

A wave of love, so strong it seemed to choke him, crashed through him. He tightened his grip on her with fresh determination, pinning her down with his knees on either side of hers and seizing her shoulders with his hands, pressing his face to hers until he could feel her tiara burning against his skin. Until her eyes, darting feverishly, couldn't see anything but his own. They focused on him, and her heart, pounding against his, began to slow down.

_"Your Highness."_

Mask jerked, losing his balance. He and Moon went rolling down the peaked roof, scrabbling for handholds. He jammed a rose into one of the tiles and seized Moon by her back bow with his other hand. His shoulder wrenched painfully, but he held on.

_"Oops."_ A cloaked being floated down to be level with Moon's tear-streaked face. She inhaled sharply and jerked back. _"I startled you."_

Mask yanked around, a stream of profanity and fire hissing out of his mouth at the creature that had nearly snatched Rini away on New Year's Eve.

The Wiseman.

The same circular shield that the being had used that night flickered to life as Mask's fire hit it, making the flames steam off harmlessly. But the fire had done its job, covering Moon so that she could scramble up his back to the roof and draw her sword. Now, as steadily as if she had not just been having a panic attack thirty seconds ago, she trained the blade on the Wiseman, covering Mask as he heaved himself up onto the roof beside her. His cane-blade slid out of his sleeve. They both crouched there, their free hands gripping the roof tiles for balance.

_"Enough of that,"_ Wiseman said as the steam began to clear. Its two eyes glowed through the vapor. _"I'm here to help you."_

"Did you take Rini?" Moon's voice was hoarse. Her tiara stone glowed as brightly as the thing's eyes.

_"Would that I was,"_ he said. _"But no, little Rini took herself, and our Prince Diamond with her."_

Mask felt Moon stiffen. He could hear her heart beginning to race again, could practically taste the fear jumping into her mouth, and he knew without asking that this Prince Diamond was the white-haired man he had seen in Serena's bedroom.

"Where?" he demanded.

_"Not where_," said the Wiseman._ "When. To the Silver Millennium a thousand years ago when your dear incarnations were still alive."_

Mask went as rigid as Moon. "Why?"

_"Prince Diamond is obsessed with possessing the Moon Princess for himself,"_ the Wiseman said. _"Since he has failed to win her here, I imagine he has gone to the past in the hopes that she will be more persuadable there. He is predictable that way. As for the child's motivation, I am quite mystified."_

"Why are you telling us?" Mask said. His voice was cool and defiant, but his thoughts were in turmoil. If Prince Diamond was obsessed with the Moon Princess, why had he been in Serena's room? It didn't mean – it _couldn't_ – Serena wasn't –

_"My dear little reincarnations,"_ said the Wiseman_. "If Prince Diamond succeeds in wooing the Moon Princess, powerful little Rini will never be born, and I will never have the chance to possess her power. Surely you understand why I would want to interfere with Diamond's plans."_

He must have planned to use her. That was the only explanation Darien would accept. Diamond had wanted the princess, and he'd been willing to use Serena to get to her. He forced himself to focus and replied to the Wiseman, "So you're expecting us to do something about it."

_"Astute,"_ said Wiseman. _"Yes. You're the only two beings here who can travel to the past."_

Moon's shoulder blade tensed against Mask's knee, breaking into his thoughts. "I can't."

_"You will find that you can,"_ he said impatiently. _"Both of your powers are necessary because on their own, they are inferior to the child's. Go now, or I will be forced to take one of your little friends hostage to insure that you listen to me. Let's see, the blond one will be dying soon anyway–"_

Both of their eyes flew wide. "Don't!"

_"Then listen to me."_ Its globe began to cloud and shift, showing a foggy wasteland of gray sand. _"You will go here, to the Time Plane. There, you will go through the Doors of Time, concentrating on this place." _The wasteland was replaced by a white palace resembling the Taj Mahal. _"The Moon Kingdom's Silver Millennium palace. It is where the princess will be and hence, so will Diamond and your daughter._" Smirking malice dripped from his voice. "_Would you like to ask how you know you can trust me?"_

"No." Mask seized Moon's hand. "We know that we can't."

His eyes flashed gold, and Moon's–unnoticed by either of them–flashed silver. Then they disappeared.

The Wiseman laughed beneath the cowl of his hood. _"That's unfortunate. I would very much have enjoyed your expressions when you realized how ironic it is that I am the only being in this universe who wants the two of you to be together."_

L

There was a blur of gray, a cold wet gray like the middle of a rainstorm. Rini felt herself begin to panic, remembering how, when she had first traveled to the past almost half a year ago, she had seen that icy black place and the Senshi who had come toward her and said that she had to leave…

Then her body was yanked to a stop, her knees buckling and crashing into the ground.

Diamond's hand remained tight as a vice around hers, for all that it was slick with sweat. She found herself gripping it tightly in return, struggling back to her feet as she looked furtively around. She could barely see anything; they were completely surrounded by thick gray fog. It billowed and made dark shapes, shadows, and she shrunk closer to Diamond.

"Where are we?"

But he didn't get a chance to answer. The fog before them was lightening, thinning, and a dark, humped shadow lurked behind it.

"No," came a hiss. The fog cleared completely away, and revealed was a dark-skinned woman in a black and white Senshi fuku, leaning heavily to a tall silver staff as though it was the only thing keeping her upright. But there was nothing weak about her blood-red eyes; they burned with the same hatred as the blue Senshi's had.

The Senshi lifted a gloved hand. The fog around her began to swirl, taking on a red tinge. "I won't let you go," she hissed.

Her attack was too fast to see, much less dodge. One second, Diamond's hand was in Rini's; the next, it was gone, and he was on the ground, body rigid and trembling in a terrible angle, his eyes and mouth wide in silent agony. Blood trickled from his nose.

Rini's eyes were as wide as his. _No._ He was her chance to save Serena. This Senshi was killing her chance to save Serena –

If the Senshi's attack had been too fast to see, Rini's was too fast to avoid. One second the Senshi was lifting her staff and pointing it at Rini; the next, a beam of white energy was punching through her stomach.

The impact bulleted her backward, shooting through the fog until a loud _thung_ echoed through the grayness, as though a tremendous gong had been struck.

Diamond was on his feet. Rini did not realize it until his hands were under her arms, lifting her up. She was panting, her skin coated with cold sweat. She stumbled along with him, through the path that the Senshi's body had carved through the fog, and they came to a towering set of ornately carved silver double doors set seemingly into the middle of empty space. The Senshi was slumped against one of them, a smear of blood down the silver marking where she had hit the door and slid down to the ground.

Rini stiffened as she saw that the Senshi was still clinging to consciousness, her eyes struggling to stay open as she glared malevolently at Rini. She opened her mouth, but all that came out was a mouthful of blood that splashed down her front.

Diamond was striding forward, pulling her with him. "The Gate of Time," he said, almost reverently, and then turned to look down at the Senshi against the door. His voice became a sneer. "And its feared guardian. Not so difficult to deal with, after all."

Rini was nearly slumping against his leg, shivering with her hot forehead to the fabric of his cape. She remembered how Serena would hold her and stroke her hair back from her sweaty forehead when she had used too much power, like when she transformed to help Buji fight. She forced herself to straighten up, clenching her muscles against the feverish shivers. There would be no more Serena at all if she couldn't keep it together and get to the Silver Millennium.

Diamond had the Time Key in his hand again. "Come," he said, and gripping each other's hands tightly, they pushed open the massive silver doors and stepped into the red void beyond.

L

When Asanuma and Mikai burst into the hospital waiting room, they found Buji there, sitting in one of the plastic chairs next to Motoki and his family. He was very pale, and he jumped up and ran to Asanuma as soon as he saw them.

Asanuma looked down at the boy clinging to his hand. "What are you doing here?"

"Kaa-chan's having the baby!"

Asanuma felt Mikai stiffen behind him. He turned to look at him. Mikai was almost as pale as Buji, leaning closer to Asanuma.

"That isn't good," the older man said lowly into his ear. "If the birth was going normally, they would have Buji up in the delivery waiting room, not here."

Asanuma swore, gripping Buji's hand. But before any of them could say anything more, a male nurse came out. He wore white scrubs and had long light hair pulled into a ponytail. "You should go home and get some rest now," he told the Furuhatas. "We'll call you when Furuhata-san's ready for visitors again."

Already opening his mouth to protest, Asanuma looked to Mikai. But the green-haired Shittenou was frowning at the orderly, his forehead creased as though he was someone familiar whose identity he was trying to remember.

Asanuma turned back to the orderly. "We're not visitors, we're family. And we want to see Furuhata-san _now_."

Motoki's mother and sister looked at Asanuma with tired, surprised faces.

"Asanuma, dear," his mother began in the same kind voice she always used, though it was now hoarse from tears. "The doctor knows what's best – "

Mikai lunged onto the male nurse.

"GO!" he shouted, wrestling as the man began to thrash wildly. "This isn't a nurse! This is the youma who killed the one I found in the subway! Go find Furuhata before they get away with him!"

Asanuma took off, tearing through the DO NOT ENTER-emblazoned double doors that led toward the OR. It let him into a hallway, at the end of which he could see a door swinging shut, sunlight streaming through it and the faint sense of a youma presence outside it. He shot toward it. Only as he burst through the door, emerging into a service drive surrounded by dumpsters and with an ambulance zooming away, did he realize that Motoki had run with him. The taller boy bounded down the concrete steps that Asanuma had stopped at and pounded past the dumpsters to where the ambulance was screeching out onto the road.

"COME BACK!" he yelled, running after it. "COME BACK HERE, YOU BASTARDS!"

"Toki! _Toki_!" Asanuma caught up to him, grabbing Motoki's shoulder before he could run straight into traffic after the ambulance that was already hurtling through a red light three intersections away.

Motoki yanked away. "They're getting away! We have to follow them!" He was nearly in tears again, the same way he had been when he called Asanuma on the phone. "We have to follow them!"

Just then, Mikai burst through the double doors at the top of the concrete steps, Buji on his heels. His green hair was smoking faintly, blood seeping from a cut above his eye. "The youma got away! Toki, I'm so sorry–"

Motoki turned, looking in worse shape than Mikai for all that he wasn't bleeding or nursing a burn. "What the hell does a youma want with my _dad_?" he said brokenly.

Asanuma looked at Mikai. "Tell him." He ran back up the steps, thinking that there had to be some sort of ambulance tracker inside the hospital, they were government vehicles, after all. But how would he get them to tell him? Darien's hypnosis would really come in handy right now–

Mikai caught his arm. "I know where they're going."

Asanuma looked back at him, and it only took him a minute to understand. "Tomoe's clinic. Of course!" He looked down. "Buji, stay with your mom.–"

Buji's face was white. "They took her."

Asanuma went still. He felt like the same way he did when he dived into the deep end of his parents' pool, the brief moment of total silence and weightlessness before crashing through the water's surface.

"Her room in the ward was empty," Mikai said. "It looked like there'd been a hurricane–that youma taunted us before he disappeared."

"But why?" whispered Buji.

"The baby." Motoki had come up to the stairs with them. "Darien mentioned it – the baby's aura felt strange to him."

Mikai looked at Asanuma. "Tomoe." Without needing another word, they broke into a run, Asanuma holding tight to Buji's arm and Mikai dragging Motoki along with them. In less than a minute, they were skidding to a stop in front of Mikai's car in the parking garage.

"Drive," Mikai commanded, shoving his keys into Asanuma's hand as they all scrambled into the car. "I'm gonna need to concentrate."

"Why–" began Buji before Asanuma wrenched the car into reverse so fast that he was thrown backward against the seat. The tires screamed as he wrenched back into drive and tore out of the parking garage. They barreled onto the main road, the hulu dancer on Mikai's dashboard swaying crazily.

Mikai squeezed his eyes shut. There was a tremendous rumbling sound, audible even over the roar of the engine as Asanuma floored the gas pedal. The ground shook, and the cars around them squealed to a stop.

"Keep driving!" Mikai shouted, his eyes still clenched shut. Asanuma accelerated past the cars that had all stopped for the Shittenou-generated earthquake. He glanced in the rearview mirror to see how Toki was, expecting his friend to be green-faced from the car's crazy motion. But Motoki's face was set, his jaw tight, eyes fixed straight ahead.

"I need someone's cell phone," he said suddenly.

Mikai had his eyes open again; there was sweat rolling down his forehead. "I think that should keep people stopped until we get there." He dug through his pocket and shoved his phone backward to Motoki. "Who are you calling?"

"Lita," said Motoki shortly.

L

For a minute, everything was red, just as before, everything had been gray. Rini tensed, squeezing her eyelids shut, remembering the Senshi's hateful blood-red eyes.

Then the red disappeared, and they slammed into ground. Rini's knees gave out again, and she dropped to the ground, sucking down thin cold air. Diamond kept a tight grip on her hand.

After a minute, she opened her eyes. An expanse of flowers stretched out around them. But it wasn't an endless field, like Elysion. Rini turned her head, looking around and taking in the small, tended patches of flowers. They were arranged in series of concentric circles, little stone paths weaving between them. The flowers' petals and stems looked like they were made of gold and silver and porcelain instead of organic matter. A faint tinkling came from all sides, the petals and leaves clinking together faintly instead of brushing and whispering like the green plants to which Rini was accustomed.

She looked up and saw a black, star-sprinkled sky. A cloud-swathed blue orb hung in it, as low and heavy as the Black Moon's mother ship had looked in the future that she lived in with Asanuma, hovering over the city. But this wasn't a mother ship, Rini realized. It was a planet. It was Earth.

And this wasn't the future, Rini thought, looking around. She took in the smooth, high walls that stretched up around the expanse of gardens, the faint sparkle of energy in the thin atmosphere. It was the past.

It was the Silver Millennium.

Prince Diamond made a sound of satisfaction beside her. He, too, was looking around.

"The palace gardens," he said. Excitement glimmered in his silvery eyes and his voice, which sounded strange in the thin, cold atmosphere. "Well done, princess. You were able to slip us right through the palace wards."

Rini didn't reply. She stared at the faint aura that sparkled in the air around the garden walls like constellations of energy. Were those the wards he was talking about? She followed a step behind the prince as he padded down the pearlescent stones that paved the paths through the flowers.

It was very quiet. Not even the library, where Ikuko had taken her one day, had been this quiet. The only other time that she had encountered silence so still and absolute was when… Her memory returned again to that terrified Senshi and the freezing, empty darkness.

Pushing away these thoughts, Rini became aware of a faint hum. She looked up from the stones beneath her scuffed sneakers and saw that a rows of pillars lined the garden's perimeter, just in front of the marble wall. Water fountained from the tops of the pillars, cutting through the air and falling silently into a decorative moat of glittering water that ran along just inside the wall and sent tributaries of water out to thread along the paths and feed the plants.

It wasn't normal for water not to make a sound, not even a small splash, as it fell into the moat. Rini drew closer to Diamond, her sleeve brushing his billowing cloak.

He was paying no attention to the water, looking instead at the flowers. "Could you transform into one of those?"

Rini followed his gaze, biting her lip.

She had never transformed into a plant not of Earth before, but that was only part of her apprehension. The priest in her dreams–it was still hard to think that he was Buji's future self – had told her that she could only transform into organisms from a planet to which she claimed a birthright. To transform into one of these moon-flowers would be to tap into the birthright she had inherited from the Moon Princess, and to do this as she was trying to escape having the princess as her mother seems as though it would tempt fate, convince it that she did not want to lose the Moon Princess as her mother.

Rini shook her head. She was thinking too much. She needed to stop being ridiculous.

"Wait," said Diamond abruptly. "No. Turn into a Terran flower. The princess will be more drawn in by that than by flowers she already knows."

Rini looked up at him. "You're going to give me to her?" This seemed strange to her, but what else had she expected to do once she got to the past? She realized that she didn't know. She hadn't thought this far ahead. Maybe she had expected just to disappear and automatically wake up in some distant present where Serena was her mother.

Diamond looked back at her, his head cocked, but before either of them could say anything, a sound came from the other end of the garden. Someone was coming.

Rini transformed into a rose in a panicked rush. She felt Diamond pick her up and tried to squelch the panic that surged again in her, the fear that he would crush her in his hand or leave the Silver Millennium and take her with him back to the Black Moon ship where the Wiseman was. She had already made her choice to help Diamond; there was no use second-guessing their alliance now. If he was going to betray her, there wasn't much she could do about it.

In her plant transformations, Rini's senses were very vague, if they existed at all. She could sense auras about the same as she ever could, and her senses of touch and hearing remained mostly unaffected, but she couldn't taste, smell, or see. It was a strange sensation, especially now that she had learned how to transform into animals, forms which amplified all these senses instead of reducing them. As Diamond held her by the stem, cupping her petals in one hand, she thought it might almost have been more comfortable to have been in a total sensory deprivation, unable even to hear or feel. It was an unreasonable thought because then she would not be able to know if Diamond did something suspicious or dangerous. But she felt unspeakably nervous now, able to hear Diamond's footsteps and breathing and hear him moving.

Diamond spoke. His words were low and too fast for her to understand. She felt a small brush of his aura; he was using magic. It was so slightly that she probably would not have felt it had he not been holding her in his hand, nearly his whole palm closed around her.

Someone else, not Diamond, but the person who had made the sound that had startled her, said something quietly. Diamond's footsteps resumed. Rini's tension climbed a notch, thrumming.

The brush of power came again after a few minutes–or perhaps later, it was difficult to perceive time in this form. There was movement and sound all around her; it took Rini a minute to sort it out and realize that it was the sound of a very tremendous door opening.

Diamond's voice rang out. "I have come for an audience with Her Majesty."

There was the sound of rustling cloth and light, hurried footsteps.

"Sir, you are not–"

Again that brush of magic. The voice fell silent, and Rini felt Diamond moving forward, until clusters of new auras were gathered before them. They stopped, and the voice that had momentarily tried to stop Diamond spoke. "Lady Luna, Prince Diamond has come for his audience with Her Majesty."

A new voice, a woman's, tinged with suspicion and a little scorn. "Prince Diamond? There is no prin– "

Rini felt Diamond glide forward. "My lady." His voice was soft, snake-like, its underbelly scaled with magic. "We are sure that you recall us. Our ambassador arranged this audience through you some months ago."

"Yes. Oh, yes!" The woman's voice, now bare of its previous suspicion, was a courteous murmur. "Prince Diamond. Of course. My apologies–I have not told Her Majesty to expect you– I do not understand how it could have escaped my memory–"

"Your oversight is unfortunate indeed," murmured Diamond's voice, not belligerent but genuinely regretful, concerned. Again, Rini felt that brush of power. "We have anticipated this meeting for months…"

"Yes–yes, I know, as have I–I will speak to the queen immediately and inform her of my mistake." The woman's voice was conciliatory but also genuinely stricken.

Rini's tension ratcheted higher, a tuning fork struck by a baseball bat. How did a woman in the Silver Millennium know Diamond? There were more than a thousand years between them. He was using magic, of that there was no doubt, some sort of hypnotic magic more subtle than Darien's…

She hadn't known he had that power.

"Thank you, Lady Luna." Diamond spoke in a murmur. "While you go to inform the queen that we have arrived, we shall wait here."

There was the sound of footsteps receding on the marble floor. Around them, there were the faint scufflings and murmurings of other people, guards perhaps. Rini sweated in Diamond's fingers, barely daring to breathe, much less to talk. Did he notice her new anxiety?

At last Lady Luna's voice returned, apologizing profusely. "The Queen will see you this very moment, Your Highness. I apologize again for the mistake–"

"No apology is necessary. We thank you for your aid, Lady Luna. Please lead the way."

They strode forward into a large space, the size of the room making their footsteps echo. Rini could sense the empty space stretching far up and around her; the room had to be as big as the huge indoor stadium where she and Asanuma had gone to see the circus. A low murmur filled it, the sound of many voices, their auras faint in Rini's senses.

"His Highness Crown Prince Diamond of the planet Nemesis," announced a voice from slightly behind Diamond.

Rini felt her petals brush the fabric of his tunic as the prince bowed. Then he began walking forward before he stopped and bowed once more.

"Prince Diamond," came a regal female voice. "We are told that you were promised an audience with us on this day."

"That is so, High Queen Selenity." No magic touched Diamond's voice now.

"Then we apologize for this court's mistake," said the voice. Rini listened more closely to it now, not daring to reach out with her aura to get any sense of the woman lest she be sensed. This was Queen Selenity: the Moon Princess's mother. Rini's grandmother–although hopefully not for much longer. "These are troubled and busy times."

"As I am all too aware," agreed Diamond, regret coloring his tone. He had shifted to the more deferential "I" instead of "we."

There was a pause. "And that is why you have sought an audience with us?"

"Not necessarily." Diamond did not hesitate before answering. "In truth, High Queen, I have come to propose an alliance of marriage with the Crown Princess Serenity."

Silence slammed down on the room like a great guillotine. Not one murmur came from the people that lined the room on either side of Diamond and the queen. No one even _breathed_ – including Rini.

Diamond hadn't said he would try to _marry_ the princess!

She tried to calm herself and explain it away. Perhaps this was how he meant to hold his end of the bargain to her: if he was with the princess, Prince Endymion could not be. But her reasoning felt empty. Diamond's hand was sweaty and trembling around hers, as though he had waited a long time for this very moment. She herself felt the same. _What should she do_?

The queen's voice, when she spoke again, was simultaneously steely and uncertain. "You seek alliance with the princess Serenity."

"I wish to marry her," Diamond said. "Your Highness."

The silence lasted for only a few seconds before murmurs and gasps swept out around them like one of Darien's summoned winds.

"Prince Diamond," said the queen over the conversation. Rini would have expected her voice to cut off the conversation, but it quieted only slightly, and not out of deference, but as though from a wish to hear her reply. "Would it please you to hold a private audience with us?"

"No pleasure but an honor, High Queen."

"Then our courtiers will leave." The queen's voice gained volume. "All save Lady Luna and our Senshi will exit the Hall."

Rini held her breath. The Senshi were here, in this room? Then–Serena was here? She stretched out, trying to find her familiar aura. But she could not find it, not among the auras moving reluctantly out of the hall or the few that stayed.

"From whence do you come, Prince Diamond?" asked the queen's voice when the room had emptied. It was no less ringing now than it had been when she had an audience. "Where is planet Nemesis?"

"In the Biejou galaxy, Your Highness, not far from Andromeda."

"Then your galaxy is not so far away that you could have failed to hear the prophecy concerning our daughter."

"No, it is not, Your Highness. I doubt any galaxy is that far away. But I have come in spite of the prophecy–or because of it, I could say."

Distaste clearly colored the queen's voice. "You view her as a challenge to be conquered."

"No. I view her, as few others do, as a person."

Although there was only a handful of people in the chamber now compared to the hundred-plus that had filled it before, the silence that fell now was much greater than the one that had fallen then. It also lasted for much longer, until Rini was afraid that something had gone amiss in her transformation and deprived her of her hearing.

But then the queen spoke. "Explain yourself, Prince Diamond."

Diamond inhaled. "I have confessed to you, Lady Queen, that I have heard stories of the princess's power. I have been warned by many, from my advisers to my own brother, not to seek her hand, for at best she would take over my kingdom with her power and at worst she would take over my mind."

There was a sound, as though the queen had sat abruptly forward. "You fail to answer our question. Why, when you are so obviously aware of the princess's unsuitedness to a marriage alliance, do you propose one?"

"Because I do not fear the princess's power, High Queen." Diamond's voice rang through the throne room. "Over my mind or my kingdom. Not over my mind. I have the rare gift of invulnerability to magical coercion. My own brother, who has the gyptian gift of reading minds, cannot sense more than faint emotions from me. I am perhaps the only royal in all the galaxies who could marry the princess without fear of her controlling me. We are uniquely suited."

There was a long silence. Rini, wondering uneasily how much of what Diamond had said was actually true, also wondered if the queen was convinced already. Or if she was only debating the best way to have Diamond thrown from the palace.

At last there was a sigh. "You have forgotten the prophecy. Princess Serenity will die against Chaos. Once bound in marriage to a royal of the Moon, invulnerable to magical coercion or not, one may never marry again. And Serenity will bear only one child, and it will be our own heir to the Moon's throne. It is true, all that you say about kings and princes avoiding Serenity because of her powers, but they also avoid marriage to her for this reason. The planet of any prince who marries Princess Serenity will find itself without an heir."

"I have told you that I have a brother, High Queen. And the Moon must have an heir. Nemesis is not part of the Silver Alliance, but when I can help the kingdom of the princess who will save our universe, how can I not? Allow me to wed the Princess Serenity, High Queen. Do not deprive your kingdom of a future or your daughter of the only man who might truly love her."

Diamond's voice was passionate, as passionate as it had been when he convinced Rini to bring him to the past. It was impossible not to feel his love for the princess, his sincerity in wanting to give her what no other man could. He was breathing hard; beneath his silvery hair, his brow gleamed with the very perspiration from his exertion to prove to them how strongly he felt. Again, Rini felt conflicted. Did he actually love the princess? Was he hypnotizing them all?

_What should I do?_

"You have given us much to think about, Prince Diamond," Queen Selenity said at last. "We will now retire. We shall call for your presence in the morning."

Diamond bowed. "A thousand gratitudes, Your Majesty. Until that time, may I ask that this rose be given to the princess with my regards?"

There was a breath of air: the queen had motioned one of the Senshi forward. "Mars."

A new set of fingers, gloved, took Rini. She stayed very still, and Diamond's footsteps retreated. When the sound came of the doors shutting behind him, Lady Luna's voice spoke breathlessly.

"It is unthinkable, my Queen! That we might have missed this opportunity because of my error! A thousand lashes would not have been enough to punish me."

"Unthinkable, indeed." The queen's voice was unreadable. "What have you sensed from him, Mars?"

"Obsession," answered the voice. Rini could not tell if it belonged to the Mars of Serena's time or not. Perhaps the queen had her own set of Senshi. "The idea of husbanding the princess has seized him in a tight grip."

There was a sigh. "It cannot be helped. There must be an heir, whether Chaos falls or not. Should Serenity succeed in destroying the creature, the systems have been under the High Senshi's martial law for so long that a Silver Crystal bearer will be needed to keep the peace. If she does not succeed, a child of hers will still be our kingdom's only hope for defense."

"The High Senshi will not be pleased to see us choose a consort for Serenity without their consent," said one of the Senshi's voices, one unfamiliar to Rini.

"The High Senshi will have my daughter soon enough," Queen Selenity said. "For now, she belongs to our people. Summon her to her chambers. I will speak with her there."

There was the sound of one set of footsteps leaving the chamber.

"Selenity," said a different voice now, another Senshi. "What if the princess rejects Diamond?"

"Serenity's life does not belong to her." Was that bitterness in the queen's voice? "She cannot choose her fate. Why should her husband be any different?"

L

For the first time in her life, Rini felt pity for the Moon Princess.

Without Diamond around, and with the queen and her Senshi dispassionately discussing the princess's life as though she was no more than a line of defense, Rini somehow began to think about the princess as a girl like Lita or Serena, instead of as the distant mother who had never come, never called, never even written to her. She tried to stop, to remember all the times she had cried herself to sleep after Asanuma tucked her in, to keep her heart hard against the princess's plight. But the pity still washed over her, soaking and softening the hard walls of hatred she had built up against her.

She reminded herself that the Moon Princess was the reason Serena and Darien were so miserable. And the reason that Lita and the other had flash-forms that they were so afraid of. And the reason that Asanuma had been left behind with her and _died_. These thoughts sturdied her. She clung to them tightly, like someone who couldn't swim might cling tightly to the side of the pool, and tried to refocus on her current predicament.

Mars had left her somewhere quiet and hard. Probably the top of a bureau. Rini waited, trying to figure out why Diamond had left her behind. Was he good or was he bad? Had she been completely taken in?

After a few minutes came the sound of rustling silk and slippers padding down the hall.

"Queen Mother," said a soft voice. It was a soft soprano, timid, making Rini mentally purse her lips. Why was she speaking so timidly to the woman who seemed to view her as little more than a chess piece to be sent to her death against Chaos? Why not defiant and railing against her?

"Princess Serenity," the queen's voice said formally. "Please be seated." There was a pause as Serenity seated herself with a great rustling of silk. "I trust your lessons are progressing smoothly?"

"Yes, Your Highness."

"Luna has expressed concern with your disinterest in studying matters of state."

The sound of fidgeting in the silk. "It is…difficult…to force one's mind to focus on the difference between addressing a single-ringed planet's ambassador and a double-ringed planet's ambassador when one knows that one will never have the chance to put such knowledge to use."

There was an exhalation, as though in anger. "Serenity, you will be queen of our people. You must not live your life ignoring your other duties as though you are preparing for your death. You must believe that you will live."

The princess's voice was quieter than before. "Then why are you marrying me off to a stranger when I am but sixteen?"

There was silence.

"You have been reading Mars' mind again." Not-quite-fear colored the queen's voice.

"No," said the princess. "Yours."

There was a sound as if the queen had shot to her feet. Her heels clicked on the floor.

"You say that I will not die," said the princess's voice. It was no longer quiet. It was high in both pitch and volume. "But you do not believe it! If you believed it, you would not be marrying me to this man to gain an heir as soon as possible! If you believed it, you would send me to Endymion!"

Rini had to struggle not to bounce out of her transformation from shock. The princess already knew Prince Endymion?

"You hurl this bit of the prophecy up to me," said the queen, voice tight. "If you believe it so strongly, am I to believe that you also believe in the last part of the prophecy? That any union between you and the Terran prince could destroy the universe? Do you believe that and still wish me to betroth you to him? Am I to believe that you care not if you endanger the universe, so long as you can live?"

There was a pause, and the sound of harsh breathing.

"There will be no more discussion. You will meet your betrothed tomorrow."

"I won't!" cried the princess, but the queen was already clicking from the room in a whoosh of sweeping skirts. "I won't!"

Rini heard, as a door shut, a sound as though the princess had thrown herself onto her bed.

"I won't have him!" she repeated again. Her voice cracked this time.

"You haven't even met him," came a new voice. One of the Senshi, undoubtedly; Rini sensed their presences filtering into the room. "He could be your–"

"Soulmate?" finished the princess bitterly.

"Well." The Senshi reconsidered. "Vice-soulmate. He cannot be so bad, Serenity. You will learn to love him."

"I shall learn to hate him," said the princess's voice caustically. "As I shall learn to hate you if you presume to tell me who I will and will not love."

Rini strained to listen past their two voices for those of the other Senshi she could sense. Was Serena here? Would her voice now sound different because it was her past incarnation, or would she sound the same? Was her hair the same color? Lita's had turned green, after all, when her past incarnation began to take over...

"Mars." The princess's voice was suddenly excited. "From whence did that rose come?"

"A present from an admirer, Your Highness," said Mars' flat voice from a few feet away. Gentle fingers were easing Rini up from the bureau. "His Highness, the Prince Diamond."

The princess's fingers tightened around Rini's stem. Then they flung her away, to the floor. Rini winced at the impact, then cringed as a tremendous weight suddenly crashed down upon her. She realized, as she heard angry tears, that the princess was stamping on her. She gritted her teeth together against the pain to keep from falling out of her transformation.

But it was like having the Black Moon mother ship dropped onto her again and again. She blacked out.

L

The scenery that greeted Sailor Moon's eyes, when she opened them, was exactly the expanse of fog-obscured gray that had been in the Wiseman's crystal ball. She turned to look around, feeling the powdery sand shift beneath her boots. Tuxedo Mask shifted closer to her, the warmth of his sleeved arm radiating to her bare one.

"It was that prince's aura, wasn't it," he said. Like her, he was staring into the gray fog, but she felt the weight of all his other senses pressing down on her, searching. "The one with Rini's."

"Yes," she said shortly. Her face felt stiff and her eyes itchy from all her crying, and the fact that he had witnessed it made it even worse. She didn't want him to know anything about Diamond, not what he had done or what he could do, even though she knew that it was his daughter that was now in danger from Diamond and that he deserved to know what the man was capable of. But she didn't want to see what would happen if he found out what Diamond had been coming into her bedroom and doing. She didn't want to see whether he would burst into some raging wolf-form that she would have to soothe back under control or whether he would turn cold and icy and contemptuous the way he had been the past few weeks.

She wanted to find Rini. That was all she wanted. To find Rini and go back to the future and have a girls' night with nail polish and chick flicks with Lita. It would be Rini's first girls' night, and they'd have to work very hard to find a romantic movie that she wouldn't think was stupid, Moon thought, smiling tremulously.

Mask's sleeve brushed against her arm, and her smile disappeared. She took a step forward into the swirling fog and had to blink her eyes rapidly against it. When she and Sammy had been very young, they had pretended to be astronauts and put plastic grocery bags over their heads to be their space helmets. When Serena had breathed, the thin polystyrene had plastered itself against every centimeter of her face, her inhalation sucking it into her mouth until she coughed and Ikuko came rushing in and nearly had a heart attack as she clawed the bags off her and Sammy. This fog felt a lot like the bag had, clinging to her, trying to suffocate her. She breathed heavily, and when Mask's hand closed around her elbow, she did not yank away, too desperate for something to hold onto. She was still studiously avoiding the rope between them, but even without it, it was easy to tell that they were thinking the same thing: had the Wiseman sent them into a trap?

It might have been an hour later, or maybe only a few minutes later, when Moon's boot hit something hard. She flinched to a stop, Mask stiffening immediately beside her.

The gray fog in front of them had begun to lighten. Like a special effect out of a movie, it began to swirl and boil silently away, revealing two things behind it.

First, a massive set of double doors, made of some dull gray metal or stone. Etchings curled up and down their length, and gray fog surrounded them on either side, so thick that it might have been a wall itself. One of the doors was ajar, swung partially inward. All Moon could see inside it were blood-red and ruby-dark lights pulsing inside it like the interior of some sort of dance club. They spun and flashed so ferociously that it seemed like they should be accompanied by the howling winds of a hurricane. But everything was completely silent.

Second, a woman was slumped against the door that was still closed.

Slowly, almost as though in a dream, Sailor Moon walked toward the woman. Her head lolled forward onto her chest, her face covered by long, dark green hair, and her skin was the color of a copper coin tarnished by time. But those were peripheral details, noticed unconsciously and filed away for later. What Moon noticed first was that the woman was wearing a Senshi fuku. It was black where Moon's was blue, and the white fabric over her abdomen was stained with blood.

The blood appeared to be from a wound on her side, almost exactly where Moon's Twilight Flash had gored Prince Diamond. As the Senshi breathed–which Moon saw, now, that she was doing, shallowly–little rivulets of blood appeared at the wound's edge and ran down to darken her fuku further.

"Wait, Moon..." Mask edged in front of her, between her and the Senshi, his cape brushing her legs. His cane-blade slid out of his sleeve.

The Senshi moved. It was just a loll of her head, enough to twitch her curtain of hair far enough to the side that one of her eyes was now visible. The eye was as dark a red as the blood staining the woman's fuku, and as it focused up on Mask, it seemed to boil with hatred.

Mask moved closer to Moon, his hand tightening around his cane-blade. The Senshi's eye traveled down, away from him, to meet Moon's gaze. The hatred shifted and became something else, something that made her pupil widen and turn so dark that it did not even reflect Moon's pale face.

The Senshi's mouth moved. Nothing but a wet rasping sound came out, but as she stared at Moon, her lips kept moving, as though she was trying to say something. More blood streamed from the wound in her abdomen, faster now.

Mask stepped in front of Moon, blocking her completely from the Senshi's sight. "Let's go." He reached behind him, pulling Moon forward with him, toward the open door. His muscles stayed tense and ready for the Senshi to lunge up and grab for Moon.

The Senshi tried. At least, she seemed to. As Moon and Mask moved away, she slumped forward, another wet sound of pain escaping her, and put trembling hands stiffly to the sand as though to push herself up.

"Come on!" Shoving the image of the Taj Mahal-like palace into his mind, Mask grabbed tight hold of Moon and jumped. She felt a tug in the vicinity of her Subspace Pocket, and then they were falling into the storm of red light.

L

The Silver Millennium's Sailor Pluto recognized the insignia across the front of the man's tunic. Stitched with golden thread as delicate as a filigree, it belonged to a planetary kingship in the Biejou galaxy, one of a similar size to her own planet. Her tutor back on Pluto, decades and decades ago, back when she had been known as Setsuna instead of Pluto, had used it as an example of a planet that could manage to be powerful despite its small size.

For some reason, the memory of her tutor, with his lacy frock and nasal voice, made Pluto laugh. There was an edge of hysteria to the sound. It seemed that she was becoming nostalgic as she began to take the actions that might shatter everything she knew. Reverting to childhood memories in order to protect her from the adult reality, Sailor Mercury would say.

Pluto's laughter died, the quill trembling in her hand. Mercury knew _nothing_. None of them did. And none of them would ever be able to help Queen Selenity the way Pluto would be able to. The way she _was_ doing, right now, as she wrote the message telling the High Senshi who had come through the Time Plane to the Silver Millennium with the Time Key that she had given them.

She looked again at the time mirror before her. It showed the silver-haired prince–Diamond, he had called himself–being led to quarters inside the palace.

"Pluto." The sigh came from behind her.

Sailor Pluto spun, clenching the High Senshi's scrap of parchment into a ball in her hand to hide it. Her eyes met Queen Selenity's light ones. The Queen had made no sound as she approached, as usual. Usually, Pluto gloried in her queen's stealth, proud that she was not merely a figurehead on a throne but a capable warrior in her own right, but today, as she clenched the proof of her own treachery in her hand, she wished Selenity were not so stealthy.

But the queen did not seem to notice Pluto's discomfort. She stepped out of the gray fog that always swirled through the Time Plane and came to Pluto, sinking her forehead onto the Senshi's stiff shoulder.

Pluto immediately brought her free arm up around Selenity's thin shoulders. "What is amiss, my queen?"

Selenity shook her head. "I am a failure as a mother, Pluto."

Pluto felt, again, the bitterness that she always felt toward the princess who had put her queen through so much anguish and guilt. "You are not, my lady. You have done what is necessary to deal with the princess."

"What is necessary for myself, perhaps." Selenity took a deep breath and straightened, her hair and gown rustling around her. "And what is necessary for the kingdom, and for the High Senshi. But not what is necessary for her."

"You speak of the new prince," Pluto said. Behind her, she traced a circle in the fog with her finger, feeling the time mirror that linked her to the High Senshi materialize. She began to push the ball of parchment through it. "The silver one."

"Yes." Selenity's eyes were distant, as if she had opened her own time mirror and was gazing into it. She turned suddenly to Pluto, her expression desperate. "Pluto, if you could just tell me one thing–one thing about the future–"

Pluto tried to make her eyes hard as they met the queen's desperate silver ones. Behind her, the scrap of parchment was almost through the mirror.

"Will she be happy with him?" Selenity whispered. "Even for a while?"

The mirror's liquid-like surface rippled as the parchment fell completely through it.

"Yes," Pluto lied. "He will make her very happy. Much happier than Endymion."

A watery smile broke out across Selenity's face. She took a swift step toward Pluto, seizing her hands in hers. "Thank you, Pluto," she breathed, squeezing her fingers tightly. Then she let go and stepped away, vanishing back into the mortal plane.

Pluto looked down at her hands. "I am doing the right thing," she told herself.

Yet she felt guilt. And it ate at her so deeply that she did not sense the two presences materializing in one of the mirrors behind her until they had already disappeared.

L

Traveling back in time was like riding a roller coaster. Darien had never been on one, but Serena had been on many. The most intense one she had ever ridden had moved two hundred kilometers an hour, sped through three inverted loops, and had two completely vertical drops. Her head had banged back and forth between the head bars the whole time, rattling her teeth in her jaw, and the G-forces had been so strong that she had felt like her limbs were going to be torn from her body and her face from her skull.

This was ten times worse.

She gritted her teeth and squeezed her arms tighter around Tuxedo Mask's waist. Her watering eyes were screwed shut, but the flashing red lights seared through her eyelids anyways, an inescapable rage of bloody scarlets and fiery crimsons. She found herself wondering if this was what hell would be like.

As if he had heard her thought, Mask's arms tightened around her. There was only enough time for her mind to splinter away from thoughts of hell to _he's crushing me_ before everything suddenly went gray.

There was no impact. Only the sudden impression of stillness and a quiet darkness behind her eyelids. Moon cracked an eyelid open experimentally. The storm of red light was gone. Instead, they were surrounded by a flat expanse of silvery gray sand not unlike that of the Time Plane and, above them, a starry black sky with a huge blue-and-white-swathed planet hanging in it. It looked so huge and so close that Moon cringed for a moment, feeling as though it could drop down and crush them at any moment.

That small movement made her aware, for the first time, of a weird sense of weightlessness, as though she was floating. It wasn't such an unusual feeling to have after getting off a roller coaster, so it didn't bother her until she tried to take a breath – and couldn't.

Her eyes went wide. Her eyes flew up to Mask's, but he looked just as dazed, and panicked, as she did. She also noticed that his top hat was floating away from his head and his cloak was rippling out slowly and silently behind him as though lifted by the same invisible wind. She twisted around in his arms, which, though they had loosened slightly, were still knotted around her, and saw that her fuku collar and skirt were doing the same thing, rippling slowly and silently–and _eerily_–upward.

Then she looked down, and the situation became even worse. Because their feet were also floating slowly upward, away from the sandy ground…and into the black sky above them.

Moon's eyes snapped back to Mask's, her mind firing as quickly as it could, which wasn't very quickly. Black was beginning to prickle at the edges of her vision. _Oxygen deprivation_, she thought. She could see Mask's face, the urgency of his expression and his mouth moving as though he was trying to say something, but no sound reached her ears at all. She felt only a tremendous pressure digging into her ears and pressing down on every inch of her body, a pressure that wasn't enough to keep them from floating away into space…

Something slammed into them. It was small and round, and reminded Serena of the numerous dodgeballs her klutziness had gotten her hit by in gym class. There was only enough time for Moon to have that thought before the shape hit them again, this time right in her shoulder – then again, this time against Mask's shoulder. Mask's grip tightened, and Moon understood at the same time as him: the impacts were pushing them back toward the ground. She tensed her muscles, trying to ignore the black more rapidly invading her sight, trying to be ready as soon as possible to throw herself at the ground and hold onto it, burrow into it if possible to keep from floating away and becoming space debris. But even if they could get to the ground, there was no oxygen…

The toes of her boots brushed the sand. Mask, with his longer legs, must have an even better grip; he was pulling her hastily down, and the shape, whatever it was, hurled itself at them one last time, slamming them against the sand so hard that Moon let out an _oof_–along with the rest of her remaining oxygen. Her eyes widened in horror.

Then there was a shower of sparkling dust and confetti, and Moon abruptly found herself able to breathe again.

She blinked, looking at Mask's face a few inches from hers. He blinked back, and looked around.

"Make haste, take a breath," said a sharp, echoing voice that wasn't his but, instead, seemed to come from all around them. Moon blinked again and realized that something like a sealed pink fishbowl seemed to be enclosing their heads. "You must head toward that tower. Do you see it?"

For the first time, she did. About twenty yards directly ahead of them, there was something that looked like a lighthouse. It was the same silvery gray as the landscape all around them and seemed to fade into it. More interestingly, though–although not as interestingly as whatever this strange fishbowl letting them breathe was, or the voice coming from it–was the fact that Moon could sense two walls of power radiating out from either side of the tower, extending as far as she could sense.

"Careful," warned the voice as Mask, still gripping Moon, began to slog forward through the sand. It was a female voice, and a sharp impatience was quickly overtaking the concern that had colored it before. "As long as I am helping you to breathe, I cannot save you if you begin to float away again."

"What happens when we get to this tower?" Mask's voice was strained.

"It is part of a protective ward that holds in atmosphere and magnifies gravity," the voice said shortly. "You will be able to breathe inside it and move without fear of floating away."

Moon's heart finally began to slow with relief, and she gripped Mask's hand. They had to move awkwardly, as though in a three-legged race, pushing their feet through the sand as though it was ankle-deep water, at times dropping to their hands and knees when one of them felt they were beginning to pull away from the ground. Their breathing was loud and labored in the awkward breathing-bowl, and the voice did not speak again. Moon knew, from the tension of Mask's body next to hers, that he was already furiously thinking of what the voice could be and whether they could trust it.

"Um," she said, doing some furious thinking of her own, "please, miss, we're here to find someone. Did you help another person like us, a little girl, about this tall–" She lifted her arm to show Rini's height, "with blue eyes and brown hair, but she might have been disguised–"

"That child teleported straight to the palace," the voice said, not even waiting for Moon to finish. "You will have to hurry if you are to catch her."

"Was a man with her?" Mask asked harshly.

"Yes," said the voice, a hint of a hiss at the end of it. "He will bring ruin to this time and yours if you do not find him and stop him. You are nearly here. Once you are through the ward, I will take another form. Do not be alarmed."

Moon looked ahead of them in surprise and some alarm, but before there was a chance for them to ask anything more, the oxygen-filled bowl around their heads vanished. That feeling of infinite pressure returned, and Moon ducked through the wall of silvery aura, grabbing Mask's arm and yanking him after her when he showed signs of being suspicious and hesitating outside.

The pressure was immediately relieved. Moon took a huge gulp of air. It was so cold that it seemed to burn her throat on the way down, and she turned her face immediately into Mask's shoulder, coughing and trying to inhale the warmer air held against his skin by the fabric of his sleeve. He put an arm around her as he looked around, chafing her bare arm with his gloved hand. She pulled away even as her teeth began to chatter. Now that the terror of dying from oxygen deprivation or from floating away into space was no longer an issue, there was nothing to distract her from how very _cold_ it was.

But her attention was caught by something new: a black ball, bouncing toward them. Its swift, unimpeded motion seemed at odds with the weak gravity that Moon still felt with her skirt and hair drifting around her. She thought of what the voice had said, that it would take a different form.

Sure enough, the ball stopped in front of them: not on the ground but in mid-air, hovering before their faces. It wasn't just a ball, Moon saw, but more of a doll, with pointed triangular ears perched atop a whiskered face that looked like a fat cat out of a Miyazaki film. Most notably, it had a golden crescent moon between its eyes. She stiffened, and beside her, she felt Mask do the same.

"You made it," came the same no-nonsense voice they had heard before, and it definitely came from the cat doll. "Good. You may call me Luna Ball."

L

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**A/N:** Please review. You don't know how badly I want (need) feedback on this chapter.


	37. Chapter 37

**A/N: **What wonderful reviewers you all are! I adore you all so much. (and am slightly unnerved by how _observant_ you all are. Can't a girl foreshadow without getting caught?) Special thanks to everyone who has joined the Yahoo group so far! If you want to join, just go to the STC site and follow the instructions there. We have a **favorite character poll** up, and Coach Etoukou is currently beating Darien…did Diamond hypnotize you guys or something? ^-^

**Thank you** to Jade, source of all that is cheerful and good!

**No warnings** this chapter! Ama~zing!

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

**Subject to Change**

Season 2

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Serenity

L

The car squealed into the clinic's parking lot, screeching to a stop just behind the ambulance parked there. The emergency vehicle's back door hung open, swinging slightly back and forth in the icy wind.

A few steps away from it was a puddle of thick clearish liquid streaked with red. Mikai jumped out of the car and stared down at it.

"Buji," he said in a too-level voice, "did your mom's water break before she got to the hospital?"

"I–I don't know," Buji faltered. His face was white.

"She's fine," Asanuma cut in, glaring at Mikai. "Buji, you stay out here. Tell Lita where we went when she gets here. Then go to Elysion. Understand?"

Buji didn't say anything, just nodded and tightened his hands around the bow he had taken out of his Subspace pocket.

If Asanuma or Mikai said anything more to the young boy, Motoki didn't hear it. He was already running up the clinic's front walk to the door. It was made of the same clear, plasticized glass as the arcade's double doors, and he could see that inside, the clinic's waiting room was dark, empty just like the parking lot. He tried the door and found it locked. He took a step back, gripped the naginata Darien had given him on New Year's, and smashed it into the glass.

It shattered inward with surprisingly little noise, the shards landing on the carpet inside. Or maybe Motoki just couldn't hear the noise over the blood pounding in his ears. He barely heard Asanuma and Mikai's exclamations as they caught up to him. He reached through the hole he'd made in the door and undid the lock, wrenching it open.

More liquid darkened the carpet inside. Motoki followed it, his eyes to the ground, past the reception desk and the waiting room to the door that led to the examination rooms–

"Stop right there."

Motoki's head snapped up. A green-haired woman in a black dress stood not a foot away from him, blocking the doorway. She smiled, revealing white teeth behind her blood-red lipstick, and snapped a white fan open in front of her.

"Hello," she purred.

Motoki swung his naginata.

A hand looped out and grabbed it before it could come within six inches of the woman. Motoki's eyes followed the hand down its arm all the way back to the woman. She still held the fan in one gloved hand, but her other, black-mottled arm had stretched unnaturally, looping like licorice, to block the naginata.

The black hand twitched. Motoki slammed into the wall.

The woman's arm slurped back into its normal proportions, returning to her side. Motoki slid to the floor, white lights bursting behind his eyes. Vaguely, he felt someone step in front of him.

"Why don't you and I dance?" It was Mikai's voice. There was a sound and sensation of the ground moving beneath him, and then a high-pitched shriek.

The light behind Motoki's eyes began to fade, enough for him to see a large crevice in the floor. One of the woman's feet was caught in it. Then someone was seizing Motoki under the arms.

"Asanuma, you've got him?" Mikai's voice. Motoki blinked, pushing himself up, standing on his own.

"Yeah," came Asanuma's voice from right beside him.

"I've got this lady." Mikai jerked his head, not turning away from the woman to look at them. "Try to find a way downstairs, or underground or something. I can feel a lot of empty space under this building."

"Right. You good, Toki?"

Motoki blinked again and nodded, lunging with Asanuma for the door as chunks of cement exploded across the room. The green-haired woman had apparently escaped Mikai's prison for her. She was shrieking again, angrily, and as the heavy door shut behind them, Motoki heard Mikai say, "Well, you know, I just figured you were meant to be my partner, since our hair matches and all."

L

Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask stared at the round black doll floating in front of them. For a moment, all was silent. The creature stared back without blinking.

"If you have gotten your fill of staring," it said, swiveling around so that its round back was to them, "we must set off for the palace immediately."

Its speaking seemed to break the spell of silence that had overcome Moon and Mask. "What the hell?" said Mask. "Your name's _Luna _Ball?"

Still hovering the air, the ball rotated slowly back around. "Yes. Now follow me."

Mask caught Moon's elbow. "I don't think so. We need a little more explanation than that if you expect us not to blast you where you…float, much less follow you blindly."

The broad, unmoving smile painted on its face didn't match its acid tone. "You don't _need_ anything except to find your child, Earth Prince. But if you feel it to be so important–" It swiveled toward Moon, and its voice seemed to soften slightly, "you may secure yourself in the knowledge that I have no relation to the Luna you knew. I am called Luna Ball only to denote my position as a servant of the Lunarian queen."

The Lunarian queen. Moon's insides gave a shiver, joining the rest of her body. This doll-like creature served the queen whose daughter was the Moon Princess that her past incarnation had betrayed. Did Luna Ball know about that? The way those blank eyes bored into her made Moon feel like the ball knew everything–but then another thought occurred to her. Had the Sailor Moon of the Silver Millennium betrayed the princess with Endymion yet? Although they were in the Silver Millennium, they didn't know when, exactly, in the Silver Millennium they were. Did that mean that Serena could somehow seek out her past self and warn her not to betray the princess?

Another shiver ran down her spine like icy fingers had stroked it. Rini had said something once about being unable to tell them about the future because it could endanger it. How much more dangerous would changing the past be? Could she be selfish enough to risk it only because she wanted to prevent her own skin?

No. She pushed the possibility from her mind. She would find Rini and return to the present, nothing more.

Mask spoke. "So the queen sent you to get us?"

"No," said the ball. "I observed your arrival, and Diamond and the child's. The queen does not yet know of your presence. And she may never know of it, if Diamond manages to carry out his plan before we reach the palace."

Mask opened his mouth to ask another question, probably exactly _what _Diamond's plan was, but Luna Ball cut him off. "Come," it said. "Time is slipping past us. We must get to the palace. If you must ask me questions, then at least let us move while you ask them. This way."

They began to walk forward, away from the crumbled ruin of a tower. Despite the urgency of the situation and her desperation to get to Rini, Moon found herself gazing around at their surroundings in fascination as she walked. This was her planet, in a way–the planet where her former self had been born and had lived.

At first she had thought that the moon's gray landscape stretching out ahead of them must have been only be an endless expanse of sand, but as they walked, they moved gradually upward, and she realized that they must have only been in the middle of a very large crater. Now, on either side of them, she could see two huge expanses of glittering rock so dark that they looked black, stretching out on either side of them like an ocean.

"A-are we on a b-bridge?" she chattered to Luna Ball, looking down at the gray ground beneath her as though she might see the outlines of planks or hinges.

"In a way," replied the ball. "The dark regions you see are two seas, the twin seas."

"Ah," said Mask, and his voice and stance seemed suddenly slightly more relaxed than before. "You mean Serenitatis and Tranquilliatis."

"Correct," the ball said stiffly.

Moon looked up at Mask. "Exp-p-plain," she ordered, though the commanding tone of her voice was diluted by her chattering teeth.

He straightened up slightly, pushing his mask up on his nose as though it was his reading glasses. "You know how when you look up at the moon, you see dark spots on its surface?" He didn't wait for her nod. "Those dark spots are known as _maria_, or seas. Long ago, astronomers thought they might be actual seas on the moon, but later they discovered that they're actually just large regions of basaltic rock. Basalt is–"

"Really d-dark, d-dense rock that f-forms from l-lava flows," Moon chattered testily. "I remember, _teacher_."

A smile tilted the corner of Mask's lips, and Moon hated herself for the warmth that trickled through her at the sight. "Exactly. So these seas are actually just regions where lava used to flow on the moon."

Moon looked at Luna Ball. "Is that w-why we're called _s_-_sailor_ senshi? Because the m-moon has so m-many seas?"

"It could be." Luna Ball's voice was still flat, but with a slight hint of surprise to it, as though this thought had never occurred to it before. "The origin of the Senshi was so long ago that no one knows where or how it happened, but theories postulate that the first Senshi originated in this system."

"Anyway," said Mask, and Moon recognized his impatient tone from all the times he had been tutoring her and she had gotten distracted by something unrelated, "on Earth we have maps of the moon's surface and these _maria_. The only two this close together are _Mare Tranquillitatis_ and _Mare Serenitatis_. The Sea of Tranquility and the Sea of Serenity."

Moon blinked. "S-Serenity…"

"Yes," said Mask, directing a thoughtful frown at Luna Ball. "Although those are the names our nineteenth-century Earth astronomers gave them, I doubt they have the same names here, a thousand years earlier–Serena, are you still cold?"

She shot him an icy look. "W-would I b-be sh-shivering if I w-wasn't?"

Mask looked at Luna Ball as he took off his cape and swirled it around Moon's shoulders. "Why isn't she warming up?"

"It is cold here for Terrans who do not have the Golden Crystal's power to warm them," Luna Ball said. "In her proper Lunarian form, she would not feel it."

Mask's eyes were darkening at the phrase "her proper Lunarian form" as he tried to picture what that would entail. He grimaced at the thought of Serena having blue hair like Ami's or green like Lita's.

Moon interrupted his thoughts. "You s-said Rini teleported s-straight to the p-palace. Why d-didn't we?"

"You arrived here through the use of raw power without any sort of guidance instrument. Diamond had a Time Key to steady their journey."

"What's a Time Key?" Mask asked, but his question was ignored. The ball continued to bounce on.

"There are certain things I cannot tell you, and certain things I _will_ not," it said. "One thing I will tell you is that these shores are lined with manors. Terrans are allowed on the moon only for diplomatic purposes and then only at the palace with royal permission, so the two of you must change your appearances to look less obviously Terran."

Mask exchanged a glance with Moon. "And how do we do that, pray tell?" he said sardonically. "Stamp a moon on our foreheads?"

"No!" hissed the cat, so violently that Moon flinched. It looked at them and calmed slightly. "No. The boy can transform into an animal that resembles one of the moon's creatures, and Serena will use her pen to appear Lunarian."

Moon's eyes widened, first at the fact that this ball knew about her Luna Pen, and second at the expectant look Mask shot her. "Um…" she began.

Mask's eyes flared behind his mask. "Don't tell me you don't have it."

"I d-don't! I gave it t-to Rini!"

Mask made a sound of frustration. "Why? She can transform into any plant or animal she wants! You can't!"

"It's m-my pen," Moon chattered stiffly. "I'll decide what to d-do with it."

"I'll tell you what you can do with it–" he began heatedly.

"Enough!" said Luna Ball sharply. "Sailor Moon, we must settle for you detransforming from your Senshi form. Your coloring is pale enough that you should not stand out. Boy–" She looked at Mask as Moon detransformed into her pullover and track shorts, "domesticated dogs descended from Lunarian _loup_ roam these parts. A silver wolf of your planet will resemble one of them closely enough."

"And you?" said Mask snobbishly. He hadn't missed the fact that she was comparing him to a pet dog. "Are floating balls unremarkable on the moon?"

The ball swiveled slowly in the air to give him again the look that, despite its painted-on smile, conveyed intense loathing. Wordlessly, it shrank until it was only the size of a marble. For a moment, its eyes seemed to glow red. "You will need to undo your hair, Sailor Moon. It is too conspicuous."

Having said this, the shrunken ball then zoomed into the front pocket of Serena's pullover. Serena glanced at Mask, who was staring at her front pocket with extreme dislike. After a moment, he lifted his eyes to her just in time to see her pulling the pins from her buns and letting her hair ripple down to the ground. The heat in his eyes made Serena inhale a shallow breath.

Not taking his eyes from hers, Mask knelt to the ground, his cape pooling in the sand. His body morphed and melted, the black cape smoothly giving way to a coat of silver fur. Scarcely a moment later, he was completely a wolf, silver-furred, with his tail twitching alertly and his wet nose nudging at her shivering hand. She pulled away, wrapping her arms around herself so that he couldn't snuffle at her wrist.

Darien made a throaty sound of displeasure and bounded ahead. Serena clenched her hands into fists, trying to keep her fingers warm, and broke into a steady run after him.

_Hang on, Rini_, she thought. _We're coming._

L

Consciousness returned very slowly. It had taken nearly all of Rini's power to keep her flower transformation intact as she blacked out. All those exercises with Helios had paid off, and if she hadn't felt so terrible still from the stamping the princess had given her, she might have had the energy to feel bad for how much she and Buji had complained to the Elysian priest.

She realized that hands even more gentle than Mars' or the princess's were picking her up from the floor. They eased her carefully into a bit of water that tasted of clay. A vase.

Rini's heart leapt. Surely these fingers were Serena's. Sailor Moon had come at last–

"Sorry, little friend," said the fingers' owner. "The princess does not know much about respecting all creatures."

"Jupiter!" came a harsh voice. One of the voices from before, but Rini barely noticed, too distracted by the way her heart sank when she realized it was Jupiter who had picked her up, not Serena. "Serenity is in the next room!"

"So?" said Jupiter's voice. It did sound a bit like Lita's, though much more cultured. "I care not if she heard me, Venus. Mayhap she'll treat other things a little better if she does."

"You will hurt her feelings," said Venus.

"Our parents sold her our souls, not our friendship. I'll speak as I like."

"Jupiter!" hissed Venus, but two quiet murmurs of agreement had come from the side. "You two, too? Please! Can we not just humor her for a little longer? It will all be over soon."

"Yes, and then we'll be dead," said a voice flatly.

"Mars…" Venus sighed. "Can we please just be silent now? Jupiter and I shall take the inner doorway. Mercury, you and Mars take the outer."

Footsteps receded in either direction. It struck Rini that Diamond might have given her to the princess so that he would be able to follow her aura and find the princess's chambers to come talk to the princess. What would the Senshi do if that happened? Diamond wasn't stupid, he would expect the princess to be under some sort of guard–was he powerful enough to hypnotize all the Senshi? Should she let him? She still didn't know what to think of him after hearing his passionate plea for the princess's hand in marriage…

Her panicked thoughts gradually gave way to the throbbing pain in her legs. As she lay atop the cold dresser top, she swore she could feel the imprints of the princess's dainty heels on her body from being stamped upon. Rini could try to heal the bruises, but she would have to transform back into her normal form. To do that, she needed to wait until the Senshi were asleep.

She could still hear their breathing. One's was quick and angry, another's quick and worried, one's calm and unhurried, another's barely audible. Gradually, they all began to slow, growing closer to the regular deep breathing of slumber. But until they fell asleep completely, Rini was stuck. Stuck in that oppressed atmosphere of cold air and resentful bonds, unable to escape the discoveries she had made.

She would rather have stayed with Diamond, whether his intentions were actually good after all or not, than have come here and heard all this. She wanted to go on blindly hating her, not..._pitying_ her and feeling contempt for her at the same time the way she did now. She couldn't disagree with what Jupiter had said, especially with what she knew about how the Senshi's bond with the princess continued to imprison them even in the future. But after hearing the queen and Diamond, she couldn't entirely hate the princess either.

The princess seemed to her like a neglected little girl who just wanted to live.

And Rini knew what it was like to be that little girl.

She wondered again where Serena was, since she wasn't here on guard duty with the other Senshi. Serena was the one who had taught Rini how not to be that spoiled, desperate little girl–at least not as spoiled and resentful as she had once been. How, if she had Serena's past incarnation here with her, had the Moon Princess turned out so bitter and so resented by her Senshi?

Eventually the last of the Senshi, Mars with her nearly inaudible breathing, fell deeply asleep, her exhalations slow and steady. Rini waited a hundred more heartbeats, then detransformed.

Her muscles sighed with relief, though her bruised legs screamed with pain at holding her weight. Ignoring the pain, Rini looked around.

Jupiter must have set her on this gossamer-draped vanity table, its mirror more pearl-like than glass. Beside it was a chaise carved from white wood, cushioned with silver silks. The walls were hung with tapestries in dark blue and silver, gold, and white, and a thick rug was embroidered in the same colors. Rini thought fleetingly of Buji and Helios, but this gold was dull and metallic, not the warm glowing color of Buji's horns.

The walls, like the floor, were of light-veined gray marble. There was no window in this room. But there were two doorways, and a pair of Senshi flanking either one, standing upright but with their heads nodding.

The two Senshi at the outer doorway–Rini knew it was the outer doorway because it had a thick stone door layered with several glowing enchantment auras–both had dark, long hair. In the darkness, she could see that one's hair had a strange tint, as though of color. She surmised that it must be Mars with her dark crimson hair.

But Rini was much more interested by the other two Senshi, the ones standing on either side of the inner door. One, she recognized very well, though her hair was light, probably the same green that Lita's hair had turned last year. She was tall and muscular, her hair pulled into a high ponytail above her tiara. It was Sailor Jupiter, beyond a doubt. Rini had to fight an urge to grab her arm and shake her awake.

The other Senshi wore orange, but her hair, even in the dark, was clearly gold, bright like Serena's. For a split second, Rini was sure she must be Sailor Moon, just wearing a different fuku, and the urge to wake her up was even stronger than it had been for Jupiter.

But she clamped her arms to her sides, examining the slumbering Senshi more closely. The differences between Serena and this Senshi quickly presented themselves to her. This Senshi was too tall to be Serena. She wore heels, not boots. Her aura, kept coiled tightly around her, was not Serena's open, enveloping one. Lastly, around her waist hung a chain of gleaming oval jewels. Abruptly Rini recognized it from a conversation she had once overheard between Lita and Motoki.

This was Sailor Venus. And that was the chain with which, in the future, she had almost killed Serena.

Unease, and no small amount of fear, urged Rini to transform back into a rose again and wait for morning and the rest of Diamond's plan, whatever it was. She did not want to stay human in plain sight of Sailor Venus.

But a different urge overpowered Rini's fear. She had to see, just once, the being that was her mother.

She crept past the two towering Senshi and into the doorway of the bed chamber.

A tremendous bed dominated the chamber. It was draped in a gauzy canopy that seemed to glow in the silvery light falling through the open window. Rini took one step closer to peer through the filmy fabric at the princess lying beneath the coverlet.

Her gasp jerked the Senshi awake.

Jupiter and Venus blurred into the bedchamber. Jupiter seized Rini by the throat, green electricity crackling at her fingertips. It lit shell-shocked blue eyes and sizzled into Rini's skin until white sparks joined the green ones.

Only then did Rini jerk herself out of the disbelief that had paralyzed her. She clawed at Jupiter's fingers around her throat and did the only thing she could think of.

She teleported to Elysion.

L

They ran for hours, because Serena would not walk. She was too desperate to reach Rini. A part of Darien wanted to stop her and demand to know exactly what had happened between her and the prince Diamond. Her reaction when she sensed his aura with Rini had shaken him badly, and there was a certainty bleeding through him that the night he had come and found the prince with Serena had not been the first. He remembered Asanuma snarling, _"Did you_ see_ what Serena looked like today?"_ He had noticed her drained aura and appearance but had forced himself not to think about them, had, in fact, been only too happy not to, thinking that if she was the princess, she deserved whatever affliction was plaguing her.

A whine escaped him. He squeezed his eyes shut tight as they ran, taking in Serena's scent, the faint warmth that escaped from her shivering body and wisped out into the thin atmosphere. She was still here. He had messed up, badly, but she was still here. Still alive. Still with him.

Serena skidded to a halt, so suddenly that a spray of dust was sent up. She tumbled slowly forward, clutching at the sand as her feet began to lift slowly away from it in the low gravity. Darien seized her hood in his teeth, holding her down until she could get her feet back on the ground again. Around her, the sand she had sent up drifted slowly back to the ground or upward, further into space.

"Careful!" squawked the Luna Ball's tinny voice from inside Serena's pocket. If Darien had been able to speak in his wolf form, he would have had to clamp down on a sarcastic "Thanks for the timely warning."

Instead, he freed Serena's hood from his jaws and stalked around her to glare down at her. But she wasn't looking at him. Her eyes were focused past him. "L-look!"

He turned to look, his tail swishing against her side to make sure she stayed still and didn't start floating away again. Ahead of them, maybe the distance of four city blocks, there was a large, three-story structure sitting close to the shore of the basaltic sea. It reminded Darien more of a mansion than anything, for all that it was built much like a Grecian temple, with columns and clean white stone.

"L-Luna Ball," Serena chattered, "are th-those L-Lunarians?"

Darien looked closer, both with his colorless vision and his other senses–his hearing and smell were especially sensitive in this form–and realized that there was a group of cold-smelling beings out on the shore. He was surprised that Serena had noticed them, as he had not even noticed the large house. Perhaps, as Senshi of the Moon, her senses actually worked better here than his did?

"They are," said Luna Ball. "We must pass here to reach the capital, but we must not let ourselves be seen by them. Move with caution and stay close to the crater rims."

Both Serena and Darien obeyed but Serena watched the Lunarians intently as they dashed from one crater's slight shelter to another. Several times, Darien had to seize her pant leg with his teeth and yank her behind a crater rim.

"They're h-having a p-picnic," she chattered at one point. "And d-dancing. Their hair l-looks like H-helios's, and they g-glow! A-and they h-have s-servants waiting on th-them! Luna B-ball, are you s-sure one of them's n-not the p-princess?"

"No," said the ball decisively from inside her pocket. "They are common people, of little consequence."

_Common?_ thought Darien sardonically. What kind of luxury did the Lunarians live in if the Luna Ball referred to people with mansions and servants as "common?" For the first time it struck him to wonder what sort of economy the moon was based on, considering that its soil, which was really little more than a very powdery sand, could hardly be conducive to any type of agriculture.

As though she had heard his thoughts, Luna Ball said, "There is no need to work here on the moon. The Silver Crystal takes care of most things, and most are left free to pass their days in idle pleasure like those girls."

It was a vague answer, one that Darien did not doubt it would refuse to elaborate on. Took care of most things, did it? Like producing food and shelter and clothing? His crystal was capable of producing food, yes, although only through growing it in habitable soil, and shelter, too, he supposed–but only by growing trees that individuals would then have to cut down and work to form into a shelter. He couldn't help but feel that that way was better. He could recall his tenth grade history teacher saying during one of his lectures that civilizations tended to collapse when they reached the point that its citizens could spend more time relaxing than working. He thought of the princess's weakness, how she clung to him in his dreams without making any attempt to do anything herself. It was no wonder, if this was the sort of society she had been brought up in.

"It d-doesn't seem very f-fair," Serena chattered softly beside him. Her eyes were on the frolicking Lunarians, too. "They g-get to r-relax like this while the p-princess has to f-fight C-Chaos."

Darien's eyes narrowed. He had not paid attention to Serena's words so much as to the fact that she was still shivering violently and he could barely feel any heat emanating from her anymore. He refused to let Rini's words come true, not here in this bleak past from something as stupid as hypothermia. He thrust his nose into Serena's hand, blowing hot breath against it, and sent to her through the rope ideas of shelter, a short rest.

"N-no!" She snatched her hand away. "We h-have to find R-Rini!"

"Serena is right," said the Luna Ball. Darien glared poison at the pocket where it was hidden. If it wasn't the only thing they had to lead them to the palace and Rini, he would have used it as a chew toy. He ignored both it and Serena and stared into the distance, transforming his eyes into an eagle's long-seeing ones and scanning the horizon ahead.

L

Serena had thought the moon would be more hospitable, considering it was her home planet. But maybe it sensed how she had betrayed its princess. Maybe it sensed how, even now, she wanted Darien. Lita would have snorted and said that planets didn't _sense_ things like that, but Serena had seen the way Darien sometimes seemed almost to talk to the trees on Earth and how their leaves always rustled as though in response.

She tried to send apologetic vibes to the moon, but nothing seemed to happen except that Darien gave her a look that was surprisingly similar to his raised-eyebrows look considering that his wolf form didn't have eyebrows. The cold didn't abate at all; if anything, she found herself shivering without stop, her teeth chattering harder than ever.

Just as she began to be unable to feel her fingers anymore, Darien let out an abrupt bark. She jerked to a stop, her eyes hastily refocusing–they had glazed over as she ran, her thoughts irrepressibly turning inward to how cold she was–and saw a crumbling tower like the one they had passed when they first entered the atmospheric barrier.

"No," she told him, but there was no power in her faint, chattering voice. She could barely feel her legs beneath her. Stupid track shorts.

"Wait." The Luna Ball was peeking out of her pocket as Darien began to lead them toward the tower. "It is too dangerous–"

Darien growled, low and reverberating.

"The old magic has broken there, you fool!" the Luna Ball retorted sharply. "It is like a button in very old fabric. The magic around it has begun to stretch and tear, the gravity shield wearing away. I will nOT bE – aBLle – _toO_o – " Its voice began to warp and then broke off entirely, its eyes filling with static and flickering red. Then they went dark.

"L-luna Ball!" Serena cried, cupping it in a careful hand and touching it gently. There was no way to tell if it was alright: in texture, it felt like nothing more than a stuffed animal, and it was normal for stuffed animals not to have heartbeats. "Darien, we h-have to s-s-stop!"

Darien sent her thoughts of how he saw her: teeth chattering, face white and blue-tinged, body almost convulsing with cold. The Luna Ball would be fine, the magic had just interfered with its function, and Serena needed to rest for at least a while. He circled around her and butted his muzzle into the small of her back, pushing her forward the last few steps to the crumbling tower's steps.

For all that half of its bricks were missing, the tower seemed very sturdy. Its steps did not tremble or even creak beneath her, and after a few minutes of ascending the tightly spiraling staircase, they reached the top chamber. It was half open to the huge, starry black sky, as though an airplane had plowed right through the side of the tower, and Serena began to shiver harder, not because it was any colder but because it was so strange to see the earth hanging in the black sky above them.

The chamber was circular, its floor made of the same dark stone that composed the rest of the tower. In its center was a pedestal that held the pieces of a huge, clear crystal that appeared to have cracked in two. There were streaks of black extending from the cracks as though the crystal matrix itself was charred. Serena and Darien took little notice of it; they were looking at the neatly made pallet and folded blanket that sat against the undamaged wall.

_How convenient,_ was Serena's first thought, and her second was to wonder if she had really been the one to think that or if it had been Darien in her head, for it sounded like something he would say. Her third was to think about stories she had read about lighthouse keepers and to wonder if someone like that had stayed up here and kept this pallet to use and what had happened to them, had they been here when the huge hole was torn through the tower's top chamber?

Darien nudged her. Obediently, she sank down onto the blankets, patting her pocket to make sure the Luna Ball was still there. She immediately broke into a fresh batch of chatters from the coldness of the stone floor seeping through the thin, silk-like materials of the pallet and blanket.

She meant to sit down for just a few minutes, only long enough to warm up in the blanket. But when the few minutes had passed and she tried to get up, Darien glared at her with his wolf eyes and put his muzzle to her shoulder, pushing at her with his wet nose until she was on her back on the pallet.

Serena gritted her teeth at him, trying to stop them from chattering, and flinched when she felt his furry back press against hers. She scooted away. He made a low growl, shoving his muzzle over her shoulder to glare down at her again. His eyes clearly ordered her to put her back to his to keep warm, but she thought, perhaps a little deliriously, that the moon would get even angrier if she did.

"N-no," she chattered, curling up into a ball and burrowing under the thin blanket. "I'm n-not g-going to d-die from c-cold, D-Darien."

He glared at her again, his eyes fairly burning this time, though they provided her with no heat. She squeezed her eyes shut tight, trying to forget the cold for at least a few minutes.

Darien continued to glare at her, waiting for her to fall asleep. Once she was–and he may have sped the process along with as small a nudge of magic as he dared, lest it be detected as the Luna Ball had warned them any power they used might be–he crawled delicately around her on the makeshift bed. His claws caught a little in the useless, gauzy material of the blanket. He pushed his nose into the goose bump-covered cove of Serena's neck between her chin and shoulder, careful not to let his cold nose touch her skin, and settled his tail over her legs. She was shivering even as she dozed, little quakes of convulsion, and he heard himself growl deep in his throat as though he could scare away the cold.

After several long minutes, Serena's shivers died down. The last movement she made before falling completely still was to turn over in her little cocoon and burrow her nose–which was as cold as his–into the fur above his eyes. She made a little sound as his long canine lashes brushed her collarbone, and then she fell quiet, breathing softly.

L

A bead of cold sweat trickled down the back of Pluto's neck. She whirled, staring into the fog, one of her hands flying up to trap the moisture.

The fog continued to swirl, unperturbed. Pluto backed up, slowly, guilty conscience throbbing in her chest, wondering if the High Senshi had come to dispose of her so that she could not tell anyone of the treachery she had committed for them. She took another step back, and another.

Her back hit something hard. She spun around, staff flying up in front of her. But the object her back had hit was a time mirror, filled with a gray and red-glowing image that depicted what looked like two figures jumping through the Doors of Time, but her staff had crashed into the mirror's glass and cracked it, and she could not make out –

A face burst into the mirror, obscuring the figures. It was dark and half-masked with blood, the eyes a crazed red.

It was her own face. Pluto yanked back, her eyes wide, reflexively slamming her staff into the mirror. It shattered into hundreds of glittering shards. She stepped away to avoid them, panting, eyes still wide and frightened.

There was only one Pluto, through all times and places.

So how could she have seen _herself_ in a time mirror?

L

The Luna Ball hadn't been joking when it said that the barrier would be weakened around the tower. When Darien had woken up a few minutes ago, he and Serena had both been hovering a few centimeters above the floor. Now, as they made their way back down the steps, Serena studiously not looking at him–he had tried to move before she woke up and found him curled around her, but based on the pink tinge to her cheeks, he hadn't quite managed–he had to dig his four paws determinedly into the stone, and Serena was half bent-over, not quite on her hands and knees but ready to fall onto them if she needed to grab the ground.

Darien swished his tail at her, indicating that she should hold onto it.

"No," she said stubbornly. There was an edge to her voice that made him bare his teeth at her without thinking about it. He blurred toward her in a too-fast-to-be-seen movement and butted at her waist with his nose. She stumbled forward, and he snatched a mouthful of her track shorts securely in his teeth, making sure that she couldn't be pulled away.

She wrenched away, so hard that the hem of shorts tore off and was left in his mouth. Anger and shock flushing through him, Darien clamped down on his instinct to snarl and snatch her back again. Didn't she understand he was trying to keep her from floating away? In hindsight, he had known that she wouldn't take kindly to him growling at her and nudging her around. But his animal transformations came with their own sets of instincts, and the more fully he transformed, the more automatically he followed them.

His hackles rising as he thought about all these things, Darien almost missed what happened as Serena shoved angrily off the last stair toward the ground. Looking up as he heard her faint intake of breath in the thin air, he saw her beginning to float away, already almost a meter in the air. She had been so angry that she had shoved off from the step without thinking about what the momentum would do.

He leapt, but he was going to fall just short, his teeth just managing to snap at her hem again. Instead, he transformed in mid-air, seizing her with human arms. He wrapped one arm around her chest to grip her opposite shoulder and used his other to release the hidden blade in his cane. The diamond-hard blade shot out and buried itself deep in the tower's stone wall. Mask pressed the hidden knob in the cane again, and the cane rapidly retracted itself, yanking them back to the foot of the tower.

Serena tried to pull away and hold onto the tower's stones, but Mask didn't let her escape his arms. He pulled her more tightly against his chest, trying to still her shivering muscles with his own. But she kept struggling. Without saying anything, he wrapped his cloak around her like a cocoon and sat down firmly at the bottom of the stairs with her in his lap. She was saying something, but he couldn't hear it over the pounding of his terrified heart in his chest.

"Damn it, Serena," he said against her hair, only realizing at that moment that he was trembling as hard as she was. "Why won't you let me take care of you?"

She sucked in a breath as though he had said something unbelievable. Then, "Let _go_," she said clearly, and dangerously.

He didn't slacken his grip. "No."

Serena did something bad then. She kneed him in the groin. Mask sucked in a long, pained gasp of air and nearly doubled around her, his face to her shoulder, but still didn't let go. She could have cried with frustration. "Let _go!_ We have to get to Rini!"

"Serena." His voice was hoarse. "You and I both know Rini can take care of herself." She stiffened, and he winced, lifting his head slightly from her shoulder. "You sensed the aura left on that Senshi's wound as well as I did."

"She doesn't know how to control it! She was trying to protect herself!"

"I'm sure she was," he said darkly.

Serena hated how he talked about her, as though she was a danger, not a child that needed to be taken care of. She didn't want to hear it, the hinting that Rini was too powerful, the truth that Rini herself hinted at. She strained at his grip, flailing desperately for any other topic. "Who do you think she was? That Senshi?"

He was almost straight again, though his face was still a grimace of pain. "I think it was Sailor Pluto."

Serena went rigid. "No." As soon as she heard herself say it, she went even more rigid, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. Saying "no" was the last thing she should have done. Now Mask was looking at her sharply.

"What makes you so sure?" he demanded.

He already knew the truth, she realized, or most of it. It was why he had cut her off, after all. Because somehow he had found out what her past self had done. She had hidden the truth about Miss Lanai being Sailor Pluto from him because she didn't want him to find out about her past sin, but now that he already knew it, what point was there in concealing the rest from him?

She clenched her fingers into fists and pushed slowly off his lap. This time he let her.

"Because I've met Sailor Pluto."

He stared at her. From where she half sat, half crouched on the step beside him, his mask was opaque, the expression in his eyes impossible to see. He said nothing for several heartbeats. Then he said lowly, "And you never saw fit to tell me that?"

Serena shot him a swift, sudden glare. "Why would I? When it meant that I would have to tell you about my past self–when I _knew_ that you would react the way you did?"

The color drained from Mask's face. His mask, tilted so that the eyeholes were opaque, tilted in a silent, vulnerable way over his parted lips. He choked out, "Then–you are–?"

"Are what?" she said uncertainly. His fear had let the anger out of her like a needle letting the air out of a balloon.

"The–" It seemed like he was going to throw up, "Moon Princess."

Now it was Serena's turn to go absolutely white. She stared at him, eyes wide and lips parted in shock. "The princess?" she whispered.

He gripped her arms.

"No," she said. "_No_. Oh, God, Darien, that's what you thought? That's why you cut off the–?"

"You're not the princess?" His voice was hoarse. "You're sure?"

"I'm not." Tears clotted in Serena's voice. She shook her head back and forth as though she couldn't stop. "I'm not, I'm not–"

"How?" Mask gripped her harder. "How do you know you're not her?"

"Because I was her bodyguard in the Silver Millennium," Serena whispered. "Her secret, shadow bodyguard."

The Moon Princess was Serena.

Princess Serenity. Was. Serena.

The realization made Rini's body so numb that when she materialized in Elysion, she stumbled over the grass and went sprawling.

She didn't get up. She stared at the green grass and purple dream-flowers in front of her without seeing them.

Serena, who Rini had come back to the past to make her mother, _was_ her mother.

How?

_ "They've never visited you?"_ Disbelief had soaked Serena's voice the first time she had found out about Rini's parents. _"Or–called?"_

Serena couldn't be the princess. Serena wouldn't have left her behind. Rini had seen the anger in Serena's eyes when the princess's neglect of her was mentioned. Serena, who hated no one, had hated the Moon Princess for Rini's sake. She had never said it, but Rini had seen it in her eyes, felt it in the furious trembling of her shoulders as she hugged Rini close and promised that she would come for her in the future.

_"Nothing,"_ she had said in that trembling-with-anger voice when Rini asked her what could make her leave her children the way that the Moon Princess had left her. _"Now that I've met you, I understand how much it hurts a kid to be left by their parents."_

Serena _couldn't _be the princess!

But it made so much sense if she was. It explained why Darien was in love with her. It explained why Rini could use the Luna Pen when only Serena was supposed to be able to. It explained why there wasn't a Sailor Moon in the future, because she had become the Moon Princess. It explained why Serena could come to Elysion when only priests and bearers of the Golden Crystal were supposed to be able to enter it. If she was Darien's soul-mate, then of course the crystal must have recognized and accepted her…

"No," Rini whispered, crouching in the grass. She dug her fists into her eyes. Because if Serena was her mother – if all this time, Serena had been, was, and would be her mother – then there was nothing left for Rini to hope for. There was no alternate timeline where Serena was her real mother and she and Darien were both there, loving Rini from the first moment she was born, teaching her how to ride her bike and do long division and not letting her read anything but comic books until she was in middle school. There was no return to a future where Asanuma was gone but Serena was still there, coming to take care of Rini so that the two of them could read all the new manga and make curry together and be their own happy family as if the Moon Princess had never existed.

There was only what had already happened. Her mother leaving with her father. Leaving Rini behind.

_"Go to your room."_ Serena's voice had been so cold, so angry that day. She had turned her back to Rini when Rini came back from Elysion and tried to apologize. And before that, when Darien had disappeared, her aura had gone so cold, and she had slapped Rini's hands away.

Had that been the beginning? Was Serena starting to hate her? Was that why she was going to leave with Darien?

A breeze swept through the valley. It was icy against Rini's hot face. For the first time, she realize that her cheeks were wet, tears rolling down them. The realization that Serena might hate her was worse than anything that had happened here, even than finding out that she was the Moon Princess. She wanted to go _back_, she wanted to go home and cry into Serena's lap and tell her she would do anything, take back everything, if she would just love her again. Rini buried her face in her knees. Only seconds later, another cold wind swept down the valley, and it cut into Rini's grief with sudden horror.

If Prince Diamond married Princess Serenity here in the Silver Millennium, there would be no Serena to go back to in the present!

Her wet eyes widened. Diamond would give the princess to Chaos or he would keep her with him, but either way, she wouldn't die and be reincarnated. Serena would never exist. And neither would Darien, or Lita…and maybe not even Asanuma and Motoki and Mikai.

The wind had dried Rini's face. She swiped an arm across her eyes and pushed herself to her feet, clutching the straps of her backpack. Then she started up the gently sloping, flower-dotted hill.

She had to find Helios.

L

L

**A/N: ** I have a selfish goal. To reach 900 reviews by the story's end. Could we possibly do that…? *puppy dog eyes*


	38. Omake

**A/N: Thank you so much** to everyone who has read and reviewed! Chapter 38 will be up within days.

For now, for better or worse, I've decided to try something. There's a one-shot type thing I wrote quite a while ago that never quite seemed to be ready for posting. I glanced at it over break and thought…Perhaps what STC needs right now (among many other things) is a break. So here is an **omake** **chapter**. Chronologically, it does not fit into the timeline anywhere, since it takes place on Serena's sixteenth birthday (which already happened in the Fiore Arc), and Darien can see, and Rini is present. But that is the joy of omake. Nothing has to make sense.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own any proper nouns in this chapter.

L

**Subject to Change**

Season 2

Omake

L

It was her birthday, and she was sick. Serena rolled over beneath her covers and clawed a balled-up Kleenex from her nightstand just in time to catch another fit of sneezes.

Reaching under her back when she had finally stopped sneezing, she found the crushed tissue box under her covers where she had rolled over onto it during the night. Wrestling a fresh tissue out of it, she dropped the used tissue onto her already overflowing trash can and used the new one to blow out first one nostril, then the other.

"Sweetheart?" Over the trumpeting noises of her nose-blowing came a knock at her door. Her mother peeked in. "How are you feeling?"

"Icky," Serena croaked. Her throat burned, and now her nose felt flaky from the tissues. "Do we have ady bore throat drops?"

Her mother came to sit on her bed. "You're out already?"

Serena cast a glance over at the empty bag on her nightstand, nearly buried beneath a mountain of half-used Kleenex and empty aspirin wrappers. Her mother followed her gaze.

"Oh, dear," she sighed, placing a cool hand on Serena's forehead. "I'll send Daddy out for more. But if you suck on too many, you're going to get sores in your mouth…"

Serena stretched her mouth wide and pulled down on her lip. There was already a stinging canker sore there from all the throat drops she had devoured. But she preferred the stinging of her lip to the burning pain up and down her throat.

"Oh…" Her mother made a sympathetic noise. "My poor baby…" She rubbed Serena's head soothingly, smoothing her hair back from her hot face.

"Dis is da suckiest birthday ever," rasped Serena petulantly, basking in the attention. "We were going do go to da beach!"

"Hey, Odango Atama!" Rini appeared in the doorway. _She _was the picture of health, tan and rosy-cheeked. She'd been spending her nights camped out in the living room while Serena was sick. "People are here to see you. You wanna take a second to peel the Kleenex off your nose, or can I let them in now?"

Serena's eyes widened and she scrubbed hastily at her nose. "Dere aren'd ady stuck to by dose–are dere? RINIII!" she wailed, for the girl had ducked out of her room again. "Moooooom!"

Her mother chuckled and plumped her pillows. "There aren't. You look fine. Besides, your friends know you've been sick." She rose and headed for the door.

"I dow, bud–bud!"

It was too late, for Serena heard her mother's voice in the hall. "Why, Darien! And Lita–everyone! How sweet of you to come see Serena!"

And then they were filing in, Asanuma squeezing in first. "Serena-chan! We hear you've been bubbling snot!"

"DUBAAAAAA!" Serena wailed, her voice nasal from her clogged sinuses.

Darien and Lita both cuffed "Duba" upside the head.

"We brought soup!" Motoki set his bag down beside her bed and pulled out a tray, thermos, napkins, and a spoon. He set it down on her lap. "Lita and I made it, it should still be hot…"

Serena smiled at him, but… _Ick_! Chicken noodle soup for _breakfast_? It was her BIRTHDAY! She wanted CAKE! Ice cream cake, with chocolate cake and whipped frosting and cookies-and-cream ice cream!

"There's a cake waiting for you AFTER you finish the soup, Odango." She turned to see Darien dragging her stool from her vanity to the other side of her bed, the Kleenex-carpeted one, and sitting down.

"Hey! No fair! How come you get to sit?" demanded Asanuma.

"We'll go get some chairs from the kitchen," Motoki said, dragging Asanuma out of the room with him. "Lita, wanna help?"

"And leave Serena alone with Shields? I don't think so–ack!" Lita blanched as Motoki hooked an arm around her waist and dragged her backwards. Automatically, she elbowed backwards, and Motoki crumpled.

"Oh my God! Toki, I'm so sorry!" Lita's eyes widened. She dropped into a crouch beside him. "I didn't meant to–well, I did, but–"

"I'm…okay…" Motoki wheezed.

Asanuma rolled his eyes now, and with a wink, said, "Wanna give me a hand with them, Rini?" Together, he and Rini dragged Motoki and Lita from the bedroom.

Serena was laughing, her giggles punctuated by honks as she blew her nose to keep her airways clear. "Poor Doki!"

"He enjoys it deep down," Darien said. "Motoki's a bit of a masochist at heart, as you can tell from his choice of friends. Speaking of masochism…"

He shifted a little, pulling something from his pocket and handing it to her. "You like cool berry flavor, right?"

Serena grinned down at the package of throat drops he'd handed her and ripped them open, popping one into her mouth. Relief dripped down her throat in a cool, refreshing wave of relief.

"Yup!" she said around the lozenge. Then her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Waid–dis isn'd by birthday presedt, righd?"

Darien feigned surprise. "It's your birthday?"

Serena threw a used tissue at him. "Ged sick ad die!"

"If that happened, how would you get your present from me?" he teased.

Then he prodded the carpeting of used tissues with his foot. "Jeez, you've been busy, Odango."

She cleared her throat, trying to clear the mucus. "You're telling be." Her voice came out mucusy thick, but the throat lozenge had extinguished nearly all the burning. She bounced up on her bed suddenly, nearly upsetting the tray Motoki had meticulously set up. "I wrode a poeb about it! Wadda see?"

Darien, leaning forward to hold the tray so it didn't fall over and spill soup all over Serena's bed, found himself in very close proximity, suddenly, to Serena's face. Well, to all of her really. Her cheeks, he noticed this close up, were the teensiest bit flushed and her pupils were larger than normal–or was that just because of how close he was? Her breath smelled like eucalyptus-drenched fruit, and it was very cold against his lips, like a winter breeze.

Serena stared at him. In their round blue depths he saw, for the first time, flecks of silver, like minnows in an ocean. They extricated something inside him, some memory. He found himself tilting his head, leaning a breath closer as he focused on those silver flecks, trying to identify what exactly…

"A-HEM!"

Darien wrenched back, throwing himself back onto the stool. Distantly, he registered that Serena, too, had thrown herself back into her pillows.

Rini and Buji stood in the doorway, their arms crossed and eyes narrowed, looking like twins.

"I thought you were _sick_, Onee-chan," said Buji. The accusing expression on his face was beyond amusing, especially when coupled with the way he and Rini had taken identical stances. "She doesn't _look_ sick," he said to Rini.

"Well, she's been dripping snot and hacking up mucus and sticking Kleenex up her nose." On her fingers Rini ticked through the highly disgusting list of Serena's activities for the past day. "I _thought _she was sick. But if she wants to kiss, I guess she isn't…"

"Ew," said Buji, scrunching his face at Darien. "As if kissing isn't yucky enough already."

Beside him, Rini rolled her eyes, distracted from torturing Serena for a minute. "Yucky isn't a _word_."

"Yucky is too a word!" Buji said indignantly in a surprised sort of way, as though he couldn't believe what she'd just said.

"Save yourself the humiliation and just listen to me. It's not a word, and using it makes you sound like a kindergartener."

"Well at least I don't look like a kindergartener!"

"At least I don't write like one!"

"I DON'T write like one!"

A dreamy smile had crossed Serena's face as she watched them; she propped a cheek on her hand and listened to them bicker, pulling a Kleenex to her nose as she did.

In Darien, however, a strange feeling was beginning to build, a heavy suspicion of Buji that he could neither pinpoint the cause of nor push away. As he listened to them argue, he wore a thunderous frown in contrast to Serena's sunny smile.

"What is this, a re-enactment?" Asanuma clomped into the room, a chair in his arms. "Serena and Darien, curb your clones!"

"I'm not Darien's clone!" Buji stomped a foot in rage.

"No, in temperament you're more like Serena, ototo-chan," Lita said, entering the room with her own chair. Motoki followed at her heels, holding his chair gingerly away from his tender–or tenderized–parts. "Did you eat your soup yet, Serena?"

"Ub…" Serena looked down at the soup, lower lip poking out. _I don't want to eat soup for breakfast!_ she sobbed internally.

In her ear, Darien whispered, "Just pour it in your Subspace pocket."

She flicked a glance up at him, then brightened. "Okay! Cover be!"

Darien leaned over, on the pretext of reaching a Kleenex for her, as she surreptitiously poured the soup into her Subspace pocket. Totally overshadowing her feeling that she was really going to regret pouring soup into her Subspace pocket were the tingles that Darien leaning so close over her sent across her skin.

"Done?" he whispered to her, breath tickling her ear. She couldn't suppress a giggle, squirming.

"Dode!" she breathed quickly, and he sat back.

But it was too late. Everyone had turned toward them at Serena's giggle.

"Hmmm…" said Motoki, Asanuma, and Rini.

"HUH!" said Lita and Buji.

Serena felt a blush burning in her cheeks that had nothing to do with her slight fever. Trying to pretend she hadn't noticed anything, she showed them her empty bowl. Her nose and throat had suddenly cleared up quite a lot, making her voice sound much more normal. "Cake time?"

"Hmph!" said Lita and Rini, crossing their arms.

"I want cake!" exclaimed Buji, looking back and forth between everyone.

"Did it taste okay?" asked Motoki eagerly, taking the soup tray from Serena.

"Teehee," escaped from Asanuma with an evil little grin.

Darien cleared his throat. "So what are we doing today? Since we can't go to the beach now."

"Well, since it's Serena's sixteenth birthday," Asanuma's eyes twinkled, "we should take her clubbing."

Rini rolled her eyes. Serena reached to clamp her hands over Buji's ears even as Darien did the same to hers.

"Hey!" complained Buji, struggling with Serena's hands. "How come no one's covering Rini's ears?"

"Because I grew up with Asanuma and am immune to all his perversion–" Rini broke off as hands clamped over her ears. "Hey!" She glared up at Motoki.

Darien glared at Asanuma as Serena, her hands occupied with covering Buji's ears, squirmed her shoulders, trying to free her own ears.

Asanuma laughed a little nervously. It was times like this he kind of wished his future self was a little more…discreet? Why did he, present Asanuma, have to get beaten up by present Darien for something he hadn't even done yet?

At this moment, Ikuko walked in. "Everyone, would you–" She stopped dead on the threshold, eyes flicking curiously over them. She tilted her head in a Serena-like way. "Is this a new game…?"

Darien dropped his hands from Serena's ears as though he had been scalded, and everyone else followed suit, laughing awkwardly.

Ikuko just smiled. She was used to strange things from Serena, and didn't expect much different from her friends. "I have plates and forks for the cake. Would you all like some now?"

Motoki looked around. "We wouldn't want to get crumbs in Serena's room, Ikuko-san…"

"Too late for _that_." Rini looked pointedly at a half-empty package of cookies on Serena's nightstand, then an empty chips bag on her dresser. Serena flushed and sneezed.

"We'll eat downstairs, I think," Ikuko said, plucking up the empty packages with a reproving look at her daughter.

"Heeey!" Serena cried. "What about me? I should get to eat it, too, it's my birthday cake!"

"I didn't say you couldn't come down, sweetheart," Ikuko said patiently. "Darien, dear, will you help her downstairs? She hasn't been very steady on her feet, the new cold medicine we bought's a little strong…" She disappeared down the stairs.

"Cold medicine makes you tipsy, huh?" said Asanuma, shaking his head and grinning. "There go our plans for your twenty-first birthday…"

Lita put her hands on her hips. "And what plans were those, buster?"

"Listen to that, I think Serena's mom is calling me to help her! Ciao!" Asanuma streaked out of the room. Rini and Buji followed, rolling their eyes.

"Let's get your downstairs, girlfriend," Lita said to Serena, but Darien waved her and Motoki off. "I've got her. You guys go make sure you get a share of cake before the human vacuum arrives."

"I hope you're talking about yourself," Serena retorted.

"Of course not," Darien said as Motoki and Lita filed out. He leaned forward, pushing Serena's bangs off her forehead. "Aha, I thought so." He touched the dark bruise her hair had hidden. "You tripped?"

"Over my own feet. That's how we found out the cold medicine was stronger than usual." Serena leaned into his touch for a moment, then scooted forward and swung her legs out of the bed. She was wearing a pair of pajama pants emblazoned with chibi Sailor Senshi.

"There aren't any Tuxedo Masks on there," Darien noted, swinging her up into his arms.

She poked him. "My mom didn't say you had to _carry_ me. Just make sure I don't trip. She's going to look at us weird if you come down carrying me."

"No, she won't. She'll do that starry-eyed thing she does and give you an extra helping of cake because she's glad you're friends with such a nice boy." Darien smirked slyly. "Besides, Lita always gets so mad when I carry you."

Serena sighed dramatically, relaxing back into his hold as he stepped carefully down the stairs. "Okay, but that means you have to put up with this –!"

She blew her nose right in his ear.

Darien jumped a mile in the air, and it was only his superhero reflexes that kept them both from tumbling head-first down the stairs. As it was, they still landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, him on his back with the bottom stair digging painfully into his back and her half on top of him.

"Odango," he wheezed, "I'm going to kill you."

"Oops?" she said innocently.

"Guys!" came a shout. Then Motoki was jogging into the room, skidding to a stop with wide eyes as he saw them. "Whoah. Did you take some of that cold medicine, too, Dare?"

Serena braced her knees on Darien's abdomen to push herself up, eliciting another wheeze of pain from him. He got his revenge by putting his hand on top of one of her pigtails where they streamed to the floor as he braced himself to get up, meaning that she got a good yank in the scalp as she tried to stand up.

"Oops?" he said innocently.

"Are you guys fighting again?" Motoki said. "Don't, come on, we found something really cool to watch while we eat cake. Come on." He dragged Darien to his feet and dragged Serena with his other hand, pulling them into the living room, where everyone was camped out in front of the television.

"It's a tape of Serena's eighth birthday!" Motoki said excitedly, dropping onto the loveseat next to Lita. "It was at the arcade, I totally forgot!"

Serena's eyes lit up. "Oh, yeah, I remember that! Your dad got me the Hello Kitty pinata!"

"You mean even then Serena had your dad wrapped around her little finger?" Lita teased.

"I think she had everyone wrapped around her finger that year," Ikuko said dryly, handing Serena and Darien plates with cake. "She'd just lost her two front teeth. She was so adorable!" She clasped her hands to her cheeks.

"See?" Darien said out of the side of his mouth to Serena where she had snuggled into the armchair. "Starry-eyed look."

"Mom," said Serena with puppy-dog eyes and quivering lips. "Do you mean I'm not adorable anymore?"

"FOUL!" cried Asanuma and Darien. "That's fishing for compliments!"

"Of course you're still adorable, dear," Ikuko said, patting her daughter's hand. "But you were cuter then." She picked up the remote and pressed play.

Darien settled in to watch, perching on the arm of Serena's armchair. The screen stayed black, to his surprise, and he wondered if the video had somehow malfunctioned, for he could hear voices laughing and calling out, and a voice that was definitely Kenji Tsukino's but younger, saying "And here we are at my baby girl's eight birthday–"

But then Ikuko's voice said, "Oh! Kenji, you forgot to take off the lens cap, here–"

Serena, below Darien, laughed. "He _still_ does that!"

The black screen disappeared, and a grainy image of the arcade appeared. It looked fairly different: there were less tables and video games, and the booths had ugly orange cushions instead of the nicer blue ones that were there today. These booths were crammed with squirming, laughing kids. One sat in a stool that had been pulled up to the booth, and the camera jerkily zoomed in on her. The eight-year-old Serena, her mouth opened wide to suck in the breath to blow out her birthday candles, revealing a gaping hole where her front teeth should be that made her look almost painfully adorable. What really plucked Darien's heartstrings, though, was how she was sitting on her knees in the booth, rocked back on her heels, and as she leaned back to gasp down a little more air to blow, her shoes pulled at the long blonde streamers of hair that even then pooled behind her, and she went tumbling with a shriek.

The camera image rocked and went crazy for several moments as gasps exploded and Kenji darted forward, shouting, "Serena!"

Asanuma, in the living room, was cracking up, as were Buji and Rini. "You were a klutz even then, nee-chan!" Buji howled.

Motoki wore a concerned expression. "I remember this! My dad says that's how he got his first white hairs, watching Serena pitch over like that."

Ikuko nodded. "He's not the only one."

Darien resisted the urge to "ssshhh" them. He wanted to hear what was going on in the video. The camera still seemed to be where Kenji had dropped it on a table, tipped over and filming a flurry of moving legs and feet. After the hubbub calmed, though, it was lifted again and retrained on Serena. A little boy whose sandy hair and faceful of freckles immediately identified him as a young Motoki was helping Serena to her feet. She was laughing in that sheepish way she still had, her face flushed pink except for where it was covered by white frosting. She had a veritable mask of it on her nose and the upper left corner of her face. The camera panned over to the cake, still with its lit candles but missing the sugar-spun roses from a whole corner.

"Forget calling her Dumpling Head, Darien," Asanuma said. "You should call her Frosting Face!"

"Numa!" Serena wailed, flailing her socked feet. "Don't even _think_ about it, Darien–"

"Shh!" Darien put a hand over her mouth, his eyes still glued to the TV screen. To his disappointment, the camera was now panning away from the child Serena, who had now blown out the candles, and scanning the rest of the arcade. It was clear that just one side of the arcade was for the birthday party; in the rest, business was continuing as usual, children playing at the video games–"Hey!"

"What?" Everyone looked at him, including Serena, who peeled his hand from her mouth.

"Was that _Asanuma_?" Darien said, pointing at the screen.

Ikuko paused the video and rewound it a few seconds. "Right there," Darien said when the image of a child standing in front of the claw machine came up.

"That's not Asanuma," Buji said, squinting. "He's too fat."

Motoki, Darien, and Serena all choked on their pieces of cake.

Asanuma glared at them all. "Some friends you are, laughing at my younger self's pain."

"Come again, Frosting Face?" Serena retorted.

"Wait!" Buji said. "You mean Asanuma was fat?"

"Not fat," Asanuma said defensively. "Vertically challenged. I hadn't hit my growth spurt yet."

"I think it hit you instead," Buji said. Rini made a small sound like a choked laugh, and he straightened up, looking very pleased with himself. Until Asanuma flung a dollop of frosting that hit him right between the eyes. "Hey!"

"Who hit who now?" Asanuma said.

"Boys," Ikuko said sharply. "If frosting gets on my cushions…"

They hunched their shoulders. "Yes, ma'am…"

"Who would have thought?" Motoki said brightly, clearly trying to smooth over the situation. "Asanuma was there and we didn't even know it, Usa-chan!"

Serena nodded solemnly, licking the last of the frosting from her fork. "It must have been fate."

"Dude! Imagine what fun we would have had if we'd known each other then!" Asanuma said. "I could have brought my sticker maker to the party and we could have made everyone stickers that said All Hail Princess Serena–"

They continued to chatter happily as Darien watched the rest of the video wander to an end. It was mostly just Serena opening presents now and flinging gap-toothed grins of gratitude at other children….other children who weren't him.

_Imagine what fun we would have had if we'd known each other then!_

L

Serena glanced up as she felt a current of sadness wisp and break around her like the water that swirls around your ankles at the beach. Her eyes went immediately to Darien, who was still reclined on the arm beside her. His posture spoke of relaxation, but his body, so close above hers, was tense. His eyes were on the TV screen, but so fixed that she didn't know if he was really seeing what he was watching. She looked anyways, and only saw herself ripping open the wrapping paper of a Glitterator. Nothing to make him look so intense… He inhaled deeply, and his eyes flicked down to hers.

She snatched hers away before he could tell she'd been watching him. She pretended to look around the room instead, and her eyes landed on Lita. Her friend was staring off into space in the direction of the TV, too, with that same fixed, tense expression Darien had had, not participating in the conversation between the others. As Serena watched, Lita bit her lip. Serena opened her mouth to say something, but Motoki turned toward Lita, saying something softly to her and putting his arm around her shoulders. She smiled back, the tense expression receding, and leaned her head against his.

"Uh-oh, the lovebirds are starting to nest," Asanuma remarked. "Time for us to fly away."

Lita sent him a half-hearted scowl, which was echoed by a reproachful look from Motoki. They all filed out, thanking Ikuko and wishing Serena happy birthday and (in Asanuma's case) reminding Rini that Serena needed to get sixteen spankings this year.

"Or should I be reminding Darien?" he said wickedly as Darien got to his feet to leave. This got him Glares of Death from several people, not the least of whom was Serena's mother.

Serena caught Darien's sleeve as he moved to follow Asanuma out the door. "Wait," she said quietly so that only he would hear. "Can you help me back upstairs?" She saw him hesitate. "I won't blow my nose in your ear, I promise."

He grimaced. "All right."

He just let her hold onto his arm the whole way up the stairs this time instead of carrying her. She didn't need it much anyway; the cold medicine was wearing off, she could feel it in the way her throat and nose were beginning to burn again, but she pretended to stumble a few times so he wouldn't leave the way that she could sense from his tense muscles that he was about to.

In her room, he eased her down onto the edge of her bed and tried to step away. She didn't let go of his arm. "See?" she said brightly. "I didn't blow my nose on you!"

He mustered a smile. "I'm surprised. I was sure when you promised not to blow your nose in my ear that you were just planning to plow it in some other part."

"The thought crossed my mind," Serena admitted.

"I would say that having two elementary schoolers constantly underfoot is making you regress to juvenile behavior, but you've always been juvenile as long as I've known you."

There was the faintest emphasis to _as long as I've known you_. Serena, staring up into Darien's gold eyes, remembered the video they had just watched. What had he thought, watching it? Where had he been, when they had all been at the arcade, having fun, on that day eight years ago? He had already been in the orphanage by then…had he had a good day? Had he played with friends? Had he gotten to eat a good dinner, had he… Her questions were endless, mostly because she was pretty sure she knew the answers to them but didn't want to think that they were true, and she wished, suddenly, that she had been there with him. She loved her friends and her family and all her memories with them, but if some magical time god were to come to her right now and give her the chance to have gone and been with Darien and the orphanage so that he wouldn't be alone, she would go without thinking.

"What were you doing?" she asked abruptly. "That day, on my birthday."

His arm tensed inside her grasp. He turned to look out the window, giving her the profile that she had seen so many times as Sailor Moon before she found out he was Tuxedo Mask.

"I can't remember."

Serena's grip loosened as she realized, of course he wouldn't remember. She remembered, because it was her birthday, but of course other people didn't think about that day anymore than any other day, especially since he hadn't even known her, how conceited she was–

"And I hate that," he said. He turned, and their eyes met, locked. "That I can't remember. That there was a time in my life when I didn't know it was your birthday, that I didn't even know you existed." That there were other people, talking and laughing with her when he had probably been holed up in his corner of the room at the orphanage, reading yet another book and hating everything around him, the princess who came to his dreams and filled them with blood and pain, the other children who taunted him for waking from his sleep screaming and crying like a baby, the world of people who had abandoned him in that horrible place. All that time Serena had been in the world, and he hadn't known it.

"I just…" he said, "wish I had been there. Back then."

Serena bit her lip. "I wish I had been _there_," she whispered. "With you."

"At the orphanage?" Darien shook his head. A sad smile touched the ends of his mouth, carving lines there. "No, you don't."

She hugged his arm harder. "Remember how you said if you came to hell with me, the devil might kick us out because he'd get so sick of us arguing?"

Darien couldn't believe she remembered that. To think that she had held on to something he had said so long ago, and was still carrying it around inside her… He cleared his throat. "Yes."

"I think the orphanage would have been like that." Serena put her chin against his arm, looking up at him with her big blue eyes. "As long as we were together, we could have made it okay."

She smiled up at him. And he found himself smiling back. There was a feeling threading through him, as though Serena had gathered his memories of those years at the orphanage and pushed herself into them, woven herself through. As though, even though she hadn't been there, she had been; as thought, like Asanuma had been at her eight-year-old birthday party and none of them had known it, she had been with him all that time, he just hadn't known it.

He put his head to hers. "I think you're right."

Serena made a happy sound and snuggled into his arm again. Then she rocked back up on her knees, clenching a tissue in her hand, looking very serious. She pulled on his sleeve as though to bring him closer for her to whisper something to him. He leaned closer, inclining his head toward her–

And she blew her nose. Right in his ear.

"ODANGO!"


	39. Chapter 38

**A/N: **800 reviews! Thanks to **Dawn of Aurora** for getting us to 800 and for her wonderful feedback!

And thank you thank you **thank you** to 3Rhian Evelscire for writing a review that blew me away. Please read it if you get a chance, as it summarizes incredibly well what I am trying (and will continue to try) to convey about Serenity and Endymion. Thank you so much, 3Rhian; your reviews under both pennames have helped put so much into perspective for me.

**Thanks** also to Sue, whose patient email conversations with me made me rewrite a certain plot point that I am much happier with now. And **thanks **as always to **Jade**, who has been working with me on Season 3 and continues to root for Darien even when I don't (except when Mikai's involved)!

Speaking of Darien, a** new poll** is up on the Yahoo group. Check it out if you want to give your input on Darien's behavior these past few chapters!

**Wording note: **I simply could not see Serenity as a Mom, Momma, Mama, Mommy, or even Mother, so I resorted to the French version, _Maman._ Please forgive the anachronism, which is only one of many.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

**Subject to Change**

Season 2

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Endymion

L

Mikai slammed into a huge slab of concrete that his own attack had wrenched up out of the floor. His breath burst out of him, and he lay there, panting, staring up at the ceiling as hot blood gushed from his lower back.

_Note to self: stop making rocks with sharp edges_.

He had only enough time for that thought before the mottled black hand that was still wrapped around his ankle yanked him up and slammed him into the ground again.

"Not so confident now, Terran," mocked the woman's voice. "Shall we continue, or do you want me to put your out of your misery?"

Mikai tried to suck in enough breath to make a retort, and failed. Which was just as well, since he wasn't sure what he would have said anyways. He wasn't feeling terribly clever at the moment, and it depressed him. He'd always imagined that if his life was an anime, he would be the kick-ass character with the epic final words, not the lame one who only got to make a gurgling sound as the villain killed him off. He tried again to suck in a breath–

"_Thunder Crash_!"

There was a deafening crack and a shriek. Then hissing, like something sizzling in a frying pan.

Mikai pushed his eyelids open. A pair of very long legs in a torn green skirt was rising from a crouch just in front of him, and despite the seriousness of the situation, the glimpse was enough to make him think, _Ah…_that_'s why Motoki's so hung up on her_.

He pushed himself up on his elbows and caught a glimpse of Jupiter's face then. One of her eyes was rapidly turning black, and blood covered her forehead, dripping into her eyes.

She swiped it impatiently away. Then she shot forward.

Mikai had played a lot of video games and watched a lot of ninja movies. But he had never seen any action sequences quite like this. Jupiter blurred forward with the speed of a bullet train and slammed into the woman with just as much force. White-green electricity and yellow-green power crackled out from their impact. Then a white blur was streaking out of the maelstrom, and two black streaks were hurtling after it. Jupiter flipped backward off the wall and rocketed back into the ball of green-yellow-white power. There was a crash and a shockwave that sent Mikai flying into the wall behind him, his head cracking painfully. He blinked rapidly, clawing through the unconsciousness trying to swallow him, and saw the ball of power fading, leaving behind only the two women.

The Black Moon bitch was smiling widely, though her hair was tangled and frizzed, even smoking slightly in some spots. Her two black arms were wrapped all around Jupiter's body, pinning the Senshi's arms to her sides and trapping her legs. Around Jupiter's throat, Emerald's two black hands squeezed, sizzling.

"Ooh, you'll pay for doing this to my hair," she whispered, her eyes venomous.

Jupiter cracked open an eyelid. Water streamed from the corner of her eye, hissing and vaporizing when it hit the hands that sizzled at her throat.

"Cash this," she rasped, and spat.

The glob of saliva, crackling with electricity, arced through the air between them and splattered right onto the woman's eye.

The woman screamed. Then she disappeared.

Jupiter fell to the ripped-up floor. For a minute, she just slumped there, panting, the smell of the woman's charred flesh joining the smell of her own in the dark waiting room. Then she pushed herself up on her arms, squinting at Mikai through a loose curtain of hair and blood.

"Dude," Mikai croaked, "That was _awesome_. You look just like Renji after he fought Ichigo!"

A sound that might have been a laugh escaped Jupiter. Then her eyes rolled back in her head , and she collapsed bonelessly to the floor.

L

Behind the door, the patient rooms were arranged in a circle around a small nurses' station. Several computer monitors glowed faintly on the station counter, the blue lights of their processing units blinking at Motoki and Asanuma.

"You think the way downstairs is hidden in one of the rooms?" Asanuma padded forward, turning a slow circle as he walked, his sai held ready.

"Yes." Motoki could sense something, the electricity in power cables looping down in one section of the ground beneath them and not to the others. He let his eyes fall shut, trying not to be distracted by the shouts and tremors from the battle behind them, and stepped forward.

"Hang on, you're gonna hit the door," he heard Asanuma say and then heard him open it. He walked through the doorway, lifted his hands, and let them reach toward the electricity he felt. He opened his eyes. He was pointing at an industrial-sized trash can that was lined with a red biohazard bag.

Asanuma crouched down beside it and pushed the bag to the side. "Here it is," he said with grim satisfaction, pointing at a faint square outline in the linoleum. "Trapdoor. He must have figured no one would want to get too close to biohazardous waste, so they wouldn't get close enough to see it."

"How clever of you," came a voice from behind them.

Motoki and Asanuma spun. The same light-haired youma that had posed as an orderly at the hospital was standing on top of the examination table. A whip that looked like it was made out of blue-white electricity hung from his hand, crackling against the floor.

Without warning, he lashed it out in a lightning-fast movement. All Motoki saw was very bright light searing through the space in front of him, so dazzling it sent a fresh wave of white stars erupting behind his eyes. He heard a thump in front of him and thought that it was his own knees hitting the floor, the whip so fast that the pain couldn't catch up to it yet.

But as the white afterimages cleared from his eyes, he saw that it was Asanuma on his knees on the ground. His face was white and strained, his eyes impossibly wide. The crackling whip was wrapped around his body, pinning his arms to his sides.

"Asanuma," Motoki whispered.

The whip flared with light, and Asanuma's head fell back, his eyes stretching even wider. His mouth fell open as though to scream.

Then his head lolled back onto his chest, and he wrenched backward, against the whip. Fire erupted from him. The flames seemed to chew at the whip, their orange light mixing weirdly with its blue glow.

"Toki," Asanuma croaked out. "You've gotta fight this time."

Motoki stared at him. Then, as the whip snapped and Asanuma wrenched to his feet, he jerked his head in a nod and kicked the trapdoor open. He thundered down the stairs that were revealed beneath it, and heard Asanuma shout and the youma snarl. There was a resounding crash. Then the trapdoor slammed shut above him and everything was quiet.

L

_"Because I was her bodyguard in the Silver Millennium. Her secret, shadow bodyguard."_

Tuxedo Mask's grip fell from her arms to her hands as Serena began, finally, to tell him how she had found out about her past as Sailor Moon. It poured out of her like water released from a long-rusted-over faucet, rushing and murky at first but gradually clearer and more coherent: everything about Miss Lanai, how she was Sailor Pluto, how she had explained why Venus hadn't recognized Sailor Moon from the past, how had trained Serena, how she had left to find more Senshi.

Everything except the truth that Serena was still too cowardly to reveal: her betrayal of the princess with Darien's past self.

Mask didn't watch her as she spoke. He leaned forward until his forehead rested against her bare knees and put his own on either side of hers, sandwiching her legs. When she finally finished talking, a moment passed in which he did not move. He could have been sleeping but for the gentle sweeps of his eyelashes against her skin as he opened and closed his eyes.

"And you believe her?" he said at last. His voice was muffled against her knees. "Lanai?"

Serena closed her own eyes, remembering all her afternoon lessons with Miss Lanai, all the things the older Senshi had taught her. She remembered, too, what Lita had said… _"Lanai lied to you. If she lied to you about one thing, then she could be lying about everything."_

But Serena couldn't bring herself to believe it. She trusted Miss Lanai. For all the brusqueness of her voice and the difficulty of her training, there had been a gentleness in her eyes when she spoke to Serena. As she taught her how to focus her power, as she told her about the past, as she smiled when Serena said something a little silly, as she helped Serena fix a nose here or a crease of an elbow there in her drawings. There had been a kindness and affection there that Luna, who had lied to Serena about nearly everything, had never showed her.

"Yes," she said. "I believe her."

Mask was silent. Serena curled her fingers around the Luna Ball in her pocket and quashed down the urge to shift her legs under the weight of his head. Staring down at his shiny dark hair, she allowed herself to wander back through her memories of the past two weeks and look at them from this new perspective, from the idea that all this time he hadn't been avoiding her because he'd found out that her past self had seduced him and betrayed the princess but because he had thought that she _was_ the princess.

Some things it made better…and some things it didn't.

"What made you think I was the princess?" she heard herself ask.

Mask finally lifted his head from her knees. Behind his mask, his eyes were red-rimmed, and he reached up to swipe his hand across them, his mask fluttering to the ground as he did so.

"It was Mikai and Asanuma's idea," he said hoarsely. "They thought… It was stupid. I was stupid. You're nothing like her. And I _knew_ that. But it made so much _sense_."

He gripped her free hand, the pulse in his thumb throbbing against the one in her wrist. "It explained the rope. It explained why I always transform to protect you. It explained why Endymion has always been so…" He trailed off again, his hand tightening around hers. "And it explained how I felt about you."

He didn't say anything more, just watched her. Serena thought of how he had cut off their rope, the ragged one that she could now feel brushing against her fingers, nudging her like Darien had when he was in his wolf form. She thought of staring out the rain-lashed bus window, remembering how it had felt not to know whether she was desperate to protect Rini because she, Serena, loved her or because her flash-form was sworn to protect her. She hadn't known–and still didn't know–if her emotions were only her own or the result of another being inside her. If that same thing had happened to Darien…

She didn't need the rope, taut and twisting with all his racing, turbulent emotions, to tell her what had happened. If he had thought that she, the only person he had ever let so deep into his life, was actually the soulmate of the flash-form he had tried so hard to block up inside him, he must have felt desperate. He didn't have the past that she did, with a family and friends who belonged to Serena Tsukino and Serena Tsukino alone. All the people he loved were people who were somehow related to Endymion: Senshi and Shittenou and Elysian priests. Had he thought that if he could just avoid them all, and her most especially, he could prove that a Darien Shields did exist, that he wasn't just a puppet following Endymion's whims?

Her fingers uncurled from their tight grip on the Luna Ball. She slid her hands out of her pockets and put them to either side of Darien's face, smoothing down his silky black hair the way a mother would for her child after he has woken from a nightmare.

Darien leaned into her touch. His gold eyes shone wetly. "I will never be able to make up for what I did. I never should have cut off the rope. I should have believed in you, Serena. I should have known you weren't the princess."

He touched her cheek with a gloved hand, tracing a silver scar at the corner of her eye.

Serena went rigid at his touch. Suddenly she was falling to somewhere very deep and dark inside her mind, where the pounding of her heart all around her was like deafening thunder. All she could think was that Diamond had made that scar Diamond had made that scar Darien was stroking he had cut that scar into her and he had come into her bedroom so many times and touched her and dug dirty fingers into her mind–

A sense of dirtiness was sweeping through her, prickling under every inch of her skin. She wanted to curl into a ball. She wanted to crawl into some dark place and never let anyone lay eyes on her again.

_ "I should have known you weren't the princess."_

"Do you mean if I had been the princess," she whispered, "it would have been okay to let him do all that to me?"

There was a moment of silence like the calm before the storm as Darien digested her words, the weight behind them. Then, in a soft, dangerous voice, he said, "All what, Serena?"

Realizing her mistake, disgusted and nauseated by herself, Serena clenched her teeth and her fists. She turned away from him, staring determinedly at the black, star-pierced sky.

Darien's hands slid from her face to her shoulders, and gripped them. "Serena." His voice was more deadly than before. "Tell me what he did."

She clenched her fists more tightly.

He seized her arm. "Serena!" Her head whipped up to glare at him, but instead, his gold irsises slammed into hers. Demanding to know what she was hiding, shoving through her mind for the memories _sharp crystal grasping hands cold lips travelling down the scars on her neck to the sensitive skin between her–_

"No!" Serena's shout rang out, startling both of them. The mental wall that she had hurled up to block Darien out of her mind threw him out so violently that his own mind's barricades were torn wide open. A deluge of his memories rushed out at her _watching Serena smile at the others as she sits at the table, the fake smile were they fake for everyone he didn't know her Endymion knew her Endymion who wanted her who was he __**please feel this Darien**__ he needed to cut it off couldn't bear to feel her anymore __**break every bone in your damn body**__ insanity and the white hospital room creeping around him who was he who was he who–_

Tears burned in Serena's eyes and streaked down her face. She fought her way out of the memories as though a bramble of thorny rosebushes, panting and gasping. But she couldn't escape his mind entirely: she found herself staring through his eyes at her own scarred, wet face. Into Darien's mind leapt the memory of another tear-stained face _Rini's little hands trying to shove him the suffocating scent of pain fury fear a shriek __**Serena's **_**dead**_** in the future, you–**_

The memory tore short. Serena blinked back tears, and suddenly she was staring up into Darien's gold eyes instead of down into Rini's red-rimmed ones. He was gripping her hands hard, and the anger between them was suddenly gone, like oxygen in the air that had all been consumed in one sudden, tremendous explosion. His eyes were half-lit as though to hypnotize away what she had just seen.

Serena wanted to strike him to stop him. But at the same time she wanted to collapse into him and beg him to take it away, _take it away_, her hand was pressed over her mouth because a sob was trying to get out–

"I'm not going to let it happen, Serena." His voice was fierce, and he was crushing her to him. "I won't let you die."

Beneath his chin, Serena shook her head back and forth, as though to say that he couldn't promise that. It only made him hold her more tightly, pressing his face to her hair as she held her hands clamped over her mouth, her eyes wide and wet and unseeing.

Minutes passed, and passed, until eventually Serena took her hands from her mouth and sucked in a long, shaking breath. She struggled out of his arms. "It doesn't matter," she said thickly. "Rini matters. Come on. We need to find her."

Darien stared up at her. For a second, he felt that he must be asleep: this reaction did not make sense. But it was Serena, he realized, of _course_ this was how she chose to react, the selfless _idiot_–

"Please, Darien." Her voice was still strained. "Let's just go."

No. No, they weren't going to _just go_. Darien had felt the unbearable fear, ever since they landed in this godforsaken moonscape, that this would be where Rini's future would come true, where Serena would die. But now, he didn't just fear it, he _knew _it, the same way he knew when a storm was coming or when Serena was transforming. An inescapable pressure in his chest that only eased when he held her caged in his arms and thought about spiriting her back to their time–

"Darien."

He had grabbed her arm without thinking about it, keeping her from moving forward. The pain in her voice was mirrored in her eyes as she looked up at him, pleading.

"Rini doesn't even exist yet," he said, trying to justify his decision both to himself and to her. "You do. You're…"

"What are you trying to say?" Her voice was soft, but her wet eyes were gleaming with the beginning of anger. "Are we supposed to stop chasing Rini just because you're afraid I'm going to die here?"

Darien's fingers tightened around her arm. He willed her to read the truth in his eyes so that he wouldn't have to say it aloud, and she did, for she pulled back suddenly.

"I can't believe you," she whispered. "Darien, she's your _daughter_."

She was being unreasonable. She was going to _die_. All the time, doctors aborted a child if there was a chance of the pregnancy injuring the mother. Serena wasn't Rini's mother biologically–everything would be different if she was, he thought despairingly–but the situation was the same. Rini's existence endangered Serena's. Why wouldn't Serena understand that?

Because she felt that she had to protect Rini. Somehow, in some twisted way, she had come to love the child of the woman whose soul had condemned hers, and she felt that she owed Rini protection, even at the cost of her own life.

Well, she owed him, too.

"What about your promise to keep me from going to Chaos?" he said tightly. "How are you going to do that if you're dead?"

"I'm not the only one who made a promise they didn't keep," Serena said quietly. "What happened to promising never to hate me?"

His fists clenched.

"You ignored me. You abandoned me when I needed you. And now you want to take away the one person in my life that–"

"–you love?" he said harshly. "Come off it, Serena. You're not her mother. What right do you have to love her?"

She slapped him.

He stared at her, his face throbbing. Her eyes searched his, dark and pleading. Looking for some sign that he didn't mean what he had just said. He kept his eyes blank and hard instead, letting through no hint of the pain ripping through him. If she knew that he felt even one iota of guilt, of uncertainty, about sacrificing Rini for her, she would never give in.

Her eyes fell from his. "I don't know you," she said, staring past him, blinking back tears. "You're not the Darien I thought I knew."

Heat sprang to Darien's eyes, and they stung as they hadn't when she had slapped him. "I'm the same Darien I've always been. The one whose whole existence is defined by protecting _you_."

Serena reached inside the collar of her hoodie. She pulled out the delicate star-shaped locket she had worn since he gave it to her for Christmas – and snapped it from her neck with a single jerk.

"Then," she murmured, dropping it into his hand, "maybe you need to find something else to define you."

She turned on her heel in the gray sand and walked away.

L

There was no way to measure time in Elysion. Rini only knew that by the time she reached the crest of a hill and saw Helios's familiar white form going through a _kata_ several hundred meters away, her feet and legs were aching with weariness and her stomach was twisting with hunger.

She approached the priest as quietly as she could, stepping carefully through the thick grass. But a sudden wind whooshed down the hill against her back, whipping her pigtails into her face. Helios whipped around, his colorless eyes fixing immediately upon her.

Rini stopped short, fresh fear swooping into her. This Helios looked exactly like the one she knew. Had she somehow gone back to the Elysion of the present? What if she couldn't get back to the Silver Millennium to stop Diamond?

Helios's eyes were as wide as hers. "E-Endymion-sama?" he stuttered uncertainly. "Have the Shittenou dared you to transform into a female again?"

"I'm not Endymion," Rini said quickly. She took a step closer, and Helios stepped back. He lifted his wooden staff before him, stance defensive.

Rini tried to think of a good way to explain who she was and realized there wasn't one. She bit her lip and said, slowly, so he would understand her words, at least, if not their meaning, "I'm Endymion's daughter from the future. I need to see him immediately."

Helios's staff did not lower. "From the _future_?"

"Yes, yes," said Rini hurriedly, looking down at her hands. She hadn't expected Helios to believe her without proof. She transformed her hands into clawed leopard's paws and held them out. She ignored the feeling of whiskers tickling her cheeks and the homesickness that tugged at her insides as she thought of how Buji had laughed at her cat face and how Serena had stroked her ears. "Could I do this or get into Elysion if I wasn't really his daughter? I need to see him!"

"But…ah…" Helios stared at her.

Then he went abruptly still and blank-eyed as another wind howled across the valley.

As soon as it had died, his colorless eyes snapped back to her. He dropped to his knees amid the flowers and pushed his hands into the topsoil. The horn protruding from his hair pulsed a deep gold once, twice.

After a few seconds, he stood. "The prince is coming."

Barely had the last word left his mouth than Rini felt a new aura appear a few feet away. She turned to see a black-haired man in leather armor.

Prince Endymion.

He turned, pushing a sword back into the sheath at his belt. "Helios, what is–" His eyes landed on Rini. His voice died.

Rini stared back at the prince, at her _father_, her eyes as wide as his. It took her a handful of seconds to realize that, though he was staring, his eyes were not on her. They were focused higher. On her hair buns.

Serena's hair buns.

Suddenly there was cold metal at her throat. Rini inhaled sharply. She had not even seen Prince Endymion move, much less draw his sword. She tried to keep from swallowing against the blade and failed, feeling a bead of blood trickle down her neck.

"Speak!" Endymion glared down at her. "What manner of Chaos creature are you, posing thus in the guise of my beloved?"

Rini recognized his uncompromising tone from when Darien had trapped her in the thorny rose vines when she first arrived in the past. Serena had saved her from him then, stepping in and insisting that he let Rini go. But Serena wasn't here to save her this time. She wouldn't ever be anywhere at all, if Rini didn't somehow fix the horrible mistake she had made by bringing Diamond here.

Rini lifted her trembling, still-transformed paws. "I'm from the future." She transformed the paws back into her human hands and then back again. Her Helios, the one from Serena and Darien's time, would have scolded her for how sloppily and inattentively she did it, but she couldn't tear her eyes from the prince holding his sword to her throat.

The Helios of this time looked exactly the same as the Helios she knew, but the Prince Endymion before her wasn't a spitting image of Darien, just as Princess Serenity, with her buns of silvery-white hair and glowing, translucent skin, hadn't been absolutely identical to Serena. The prince's hair was the same black as Darien's, but it was longer and shaggier, curling around his ears and nearly brushing the collar of his crimson tunic. Maybe it was because of the armor strapped over his blue tunic, but he seemed larger than Darien, his shoulders broader and his arms and neck more muscular. His skin was a golden tan where Darien's was pale, and he seemed older, in his early twenties at the very least.

But the difference that struck Rini the most was that Prince Endymion's eyes, staring down at her, were dark blue. Not gold.

And they were focused on her hair again.

Rini took a deep breath against the sword blade. "I'm from the future. I'm the Moon Princess's daughter."

The blade lowered from her pulse point. As rapidly as he had drawn in, Endymion sheathed it. Then he was flashing a white smile at her. "And mine," he said.

"Yes," Rini said uncertainly. Was that pride that she heard in his voice? He seemed…pleased?

"Mine indeed!" Endymion circled her, his blue eyes glittering. He leaned down and placed calloused fingers on her chin, tilting her head this way and that, then smoothed her hair back with a single swipe of his big hand. "Animalian transformation at such a young age!" He crouched down in front of her, his hand still warm atop her head. "How old are you, my little princess?"

"Six," said Rini, flushing a little. "But that's not important–"

"Of course it is!" Endymion ruffled her hair again and rocked to his feet, scooping her up with him. She blinked, finding herself in a position she hadn't been in for almost half a year, not since she left Asanuma. Darien had never carried her like this. "A little girl of six able to transform at will? I told Serenity our children would be like nothing the cosmos have ever seen before!"

He tossed her up into the air and caught her, still grinning at her. "Is this the first time you have traveled through time, my sweet? Did you use the Golden Crystal for it? From whence did you come?"

Rini was getting distracted despite herself, and not just because of the rapid spate of questions. _This_ was Endymion? The prince that Darien feared so much? But he was _nice_ – much nicer than Darien was – Endymion swung her up again, and she grabbed at his arms. He caught her and cuddled her close, smelling of leather and pine trees, and Rini felt suddenly as close to crying as she had at the Christmas festival when she had wished that Serena was her mother.

The memory jarred her back to the danger that Serena was in. She caught the prince's sleeve. "Prince Endymion, I – "

His hands tightened around her ribcage suddenly. She caught her breath and looked down at the severe look on his face.

"You must call me Papa," he said, his voice as commanding as his expression. He held her gaze for a long minute as she stared back at him, wide-eyed, feeling younger than she had in years, and then he burst into laughter. She smiled back uncertainly.

"Won't you?" he cried, swinging her around in a circle again. "Call me Papa, and when I take you to see Serenity, you must call her _Maman_, and she will be so confused–"

"She's why I came!"

Endymion's smile vanished as quickly as his severe expression had. His arms around her became vices, and his eyes became blue fire inches away from hers. "What has happened to her?"

Rini's heart beat very fast. She had planned to explain how she had helped Prince Diamond come to the past, but suddenly, with that frightening anger in his eyes, she didn't dare tell Prince Endymion that she had had any part of it. She babbled out, instead, how Prince Diamond was from another galaxy in the future and obsessed with Princess Serenity and had used a Time Key and Rini's powers to come here to the past to marry the princess. She made it sound like Diamond had forced her to help him and like she had run away with him.

By the time she finished, her hands were wet with nervous sweat. Endymion gazed at her with his narrowed blue eyes, and she wondered if he had seen straight through her explanation. Darien could read people's minds; was Endymion reading hers?

But his flaming blue eyes slid to the distance, as thought burning straight through Elysion and space to where Diamond was on the moon.

"Swine," he snarled, so abruptly that Rini flinched. "Serenity is _mine_." He pivoted with a swirl of his dark cloak. "Helios, what have you heard of this?"

The priest shook his head. "Nothing, Endymion-sama."

"Find out!" Endymion ordered. Then he was striding up the hill, tearing through the dream-flowers at a pace as fast as a sprint. Almost at once, they reached the tall oak tree looming at the top of the hill. Endymion stepped nimbly among its dozens of protruding roots to where, at the very foot of the tree trunk, a single, bloodily red rose was nestled.

"My dream-flower," he told Rini, tightening his arms around her. "It will take us to Serenity." He leaned forward, forcing his thumb into the middle of the rose's tightly furled petals.

And they vanished.

L

One minute they were in the faintly breezy, flower-scented fields of Elysion, and the next, they were in the dead silent, dead still air that Rini recognized as the moon's. She opened her eyes and saw, from her vantage point in Prince Endymion's arms, the dark starry sky above them and the towering stone walls of the palace gardens.

But the flowers in this section of the garden were different than the ones she had seen with Diamond. They were roses, dozens and dozens of roses in dull reds and off-white whites. A stone wall only a foot taller than Endymion himself, much shorter than the looming one Rini had seen with Prince Diamond, enclosed the area. All in all, the garden was only slightly larger than her second grade classroom.

In the center of the roses, next to Rini and Endymion, a small fountain spilled water into a silvery pool. The pool stretched out tiny tributaries like sunbursts, little streams of water weaving their way through the rose bushes and paving stones.

"Your mother's personal garden," Endymion said to Rini. He put her down and strode toward the wall. Only as he approached it, brushing aside a draping vine, did she see that there was a door in it. It was made of the same white wood as the princess's chaises, and nearly hidden by all the pale rose vines climbing up the pale stone walls.

"It is intended for meditation," Endymion continued quietly, putting his ear to the door, listening for a moment. "No one enters here but us two."

He strode back to where she stood then, trailing careless fingers through the spray of water from the fountain. He grimaced as though he had tasted something foul, then glanced down at Rini again. His blue eyes danced, and he crouched down in front of her.

"You know how Serenity and I met, of course."

Rini had been looking around, worried by the way Endymion had just teleported carelessly into the palace gardens when Diamond had seemed so worried about the palace wards and thinking about how the High Senshi were probably on high alert after catching her in the princess's bedchamber. But when Endymion crouched down in front of her, her eyes swung up to his.

He put his hand on her head again, between her hair buns. "When I first found my dreamflower in Elysion, I was twelve years old. I touched it, and it brought me here, to this garden." He motioned around them with his other hand. "There were no roses here then. Just all those ghastly lifeless moon flowers, and Serenity, sitting right here." He patted the ground beside them, beside the fountain. "She was crying. But then she lifted her head, and the minute her eyes met mine, I knew she was mine. My soulmate from the prophecy."

His eyes were unfocused. Rini stayed very still, not saying anything, realizing just how different Endymion was from Darien. It wasn't just their looks. Asanuma had told her that when Darien first met Serena, he had despised her, and her him. He certainly hadn't taken one look at her and fallen in love.

"We have met here in secret ever since. She is not yet up to Terra's gravity…but once she has inherited the full power of the Silver Crystal, I am sure she will be." Endymion stood up and laughed, ruffling Rini's hair. "But you already know all that, don't you? You don't look as if you've spent a day in your life here on the moon."

His gaze became speculative then as it bored through her, and he seemed about to say something. But the sound of voices came from outside the wall.

Endymion spun around, blurring back to the door and placing his ear against it. He motioned to Rini to stay where she was. She scrunched up her face, struggling to transform her ears into a bat's the way that she had seen Darien do.

Abruptly, her ears rang almost painfully. She clapped her hands over them, felt leathery flaps, and realized, as she heard clearly the voices that had been so quiet before, that the transformation had worked.

Tentatively, she uncovered her ears again.

"…impressed by your knowledge of flowers, Princess."

A soft laugh. "As am I by yours, Your Highness. Few people outside of this system are familiar with roses."

Rini's eyes narrowed, confused. That was Princess Serenity's voice. How had she gone from being passionately opposed to Diamond to shyly flirting with him in only one night?

"May I be so bold, then, as to inquire what you thought of my gift?" Diamond's voice was low and throaty.

"I…" There was hesitation, then a soft exhalation of air, and then Rini's bat ears caught the soft sound of skin brushing against skin.

Then a roar tore through her sensitive ears. "Serenity!"

Rini flinched, not just from the pain in her ears, but from the furious blue flames burning in Endymion's eyes. He seized the garden door and threw it open, murder written in each lightning-fast movement.

Rini, scrambling after him, saw Prince Diamond standing on a path amidst pastel pink flowers. Princess Serenity stood in his arms, her white face flushed and her lavender eyes cloudy as she leaned into his shoulder.

"Faithless _wench_!" Endymion snarled. He seized Serenity's arm. "How dare you–"

Diamond thrust Endymion away, his eyes glowing. "Hands to yourself, Terran!"

Rini saw that Serenity seemed to be struggling to lift her head from where her forehead rested against Diamond's chest. She crept closer, trying to see. It was difficult: the air around Endymion had begun to waver and warp from the heat of his fury, a faint gold aura leaking into the air. Even Darien, when he was losing control over his human body and slipping into an animal one, had never leaked this much power. It was as though Endymion was not even trying to contain himself.

"I will deal with _you_ later, insect." Endymion's blue eyes flashed gold, and Diamond went flying backward into one of the fountaining pillars. The stone cracked. He slid down it to slump at its base.

Endymion's eyes turned back to Serenity. She still stood with her back to him and her slender arms drawn up to her chest as though she was still clutching Diamond's tunic. Endymion's tan face hardened.

"What were you going to do next, Serenity?" he spat out, his voice ringing out like a slap. "Show him our garden? Embrace among our _roses_?" He seized her chin, wrenching her face toward him.

Rini, hovering near the garden wall, felt her stomach churning. How had Endymion gone from being so kind to this? How had he not noticed that something was wrong with Serenity? Couldn't he sense it? Couldn't he tell just by looking?

Prince Diamond was climbing unsteadily to his feet. Something was glowing on his forehead, beneath his hair. He blurred forward and shoved past Endymion, seizing Princess Serenity's shoulders and forcing her face to his. She walked forward to put her face to his chest, her hands gripping his tunic.

"Have her, then!" Endymion's eyes and the air around him burned, wavering with heat, the way it had swirled around Darien when he came to save her and Asanuma from Rubeus and the Wiseman. But his expression was not the stern, dispassionate one that Darien had worn. His face was twisted with fury, his nostrils flared, golden power seeping from his fingertips and burning through the roses around him until they were beds of ash. Even his voice seemed twisted, each shouted consonant crackling with power. "Enjoy the rest of your life, Serenity! It will be short without me to save you from Chaos!"

"Stop!" Rini managed to shout, though her voice cracked with fear. She was more terrified now, by Endymion, than she had ever been by Darien. But it was Serena, _Serena_'s past self who was going to be taken away by Diamond if Endymion didn't so something! "Can't you see he's done something to her?"

For Diamond _had_ done something. From the glowing shape on his forehead, a beam of light shot straight to the golden crescent moon on Princess Serenity's forehead. Her eyes were blank and her body very still, as though she was paralyzed.

A shout came from the wall above them. Rini's head snapped up. She saw that the four Senshi were there. Mars and Mercury were crouched like tigers about to spring, and Venus stared down at the princess in horror.

"_Supreme Thunder Dragon_!" roared Jupiter's voice. The green Senshi came crashing down into the garden with fury etched onto her face like a terrifying mask. Around her whirled a long dragon with scales of pure electricity; it hurtled toward Diamond and Endymion.

There was no time for Rini to wonder how the previously apathetic Jupiter had suddenly become so rabidly protective of the princess. She had to scramble out of the dragon's way. Its electricity singed the hairs on her arms, enveloped her in an acrid stench, but she didn't notice. She was watching Endymion leap, vaulting the lightning-fast dragon as though it was a slug to be easily hopped over. The instant he landed, he whirled into Diamond, shoving him with a movement too fast to track. The silver-haired prince slammed into the stone pillar again.

Then Endymion had Serenity in his arms. She was gasping and choking as though she had been drowning and had just broken through the water's surface.

"Let her go." The other Senshi had descended from the wall now. In fact, there was a whole battalion of guards in billowing white uniforms forming a tighter and tighter circle around them. But it was Jupiter who was glaring poison at Endymion. Her dragon crackled around her, hovering like a ghost. "If you do not, I will rip you limb from limb."

"If you cannot even protect your princess from a mud clod like that–" Endymion jerked his head at Diamond, "how do you expect to be able to beat me?"

Serenity had regained her breath and was watching them all now from her place in Endymion's grasp. She held his arm around her waist tightly with both hands; she seemed even to be cringing backward into him.

"They will not."

Rini started at the new voice. She recognized it...

"_I_ will." Queen Selenity emerged from between a flank of white-clad guards. Her face was cold. Above her right hand hovered a shining silver crystal the size of an apple. "I refrained from assisting the High Senshi's attempts to assasinate you in the past because I believed that you would be wise enough to understand what must be, Prince Endymion." The queen lifted her hand, the crystal beginning to revolve slowly and flash, like a lighthouse. "But now I will do what must be done. Close your eyes, Serenity."

"Mother! Mother, _no_!" Serenity clutched tight to Endymion's arm, convulsively. Rini saw him gathering the dregs of golden energy around him, gathering them to go to Elysion. But there were too many other auras reaching out for him. The Senshi and the queen had reached out their auras like tentacles and enclosed his, chaining him to the spot. He was paralyzed as effectively as Serenity had been by Diamond's hypnotic power.

"Mother!" Serenity begged, her voice becoming a shriek. Tears rushed down her face.

Rini saw the aura intensifying around Selenity's crystal, saw how Endymion's gold aura shrank away from it, their energies sizzling where they touched like water against a hot frying pan. Why wasn't Serenity doing anything? Why was she cowering in Endymion's arms without doing anything to save him? Why wasn't she using her tiara, her sword, her shield–even using her barettes might amplify her cries enough to disrupt the Senshi's concentration!

"Do something!" Rini cried. She scrambled up from the ground, where she had been thrown by the shockwaves of Endymion's aura and Jupiter's dragon. "Serena! Use your shield!"

But the Moon Princess didn't. She turned, burying her face into Endymion's neck, and kept crying.

The silver crystal's light flared and _burned_–

Rini screamed.

A beam of white energy shot from her forehead and rocketed toward the colored auras entrapping Endymion's. It sliced through them like a laser through thin strings. They fell away, and then Endymion, Serenity, and Rini were gone.

L

Rini's eyes felt as though someone had held her eyelids apart and poured salt upon them. She made a tiny sound of pain, squeezing her eyelids shut and reaching up to press her hands against them as though she could squeeze the pain away.

Soft, cool hands caught her wrists. "Please wait, Hime-sama."

She recognized Helios's voice even if she didn't dare to open her eyes. The gentle hands released one of her wrists and equally gentle fingers prised her eyelids open.

"It will sting for a moment," he murmured as the burning intensified. Then there was a feeling as though a cool breeze had blown across her eye, and the burning dulled and began to melt away.

As it faded, Rini's vision returned. She saw that Helios was leaning over her, his anxious colorless eyes only a few centimeters from her own. A faint smile touched his lips as he saw her blinking up at him through her one eye.

"Now the other," he said gently. A lock of his fair hair brushed against her forehead as he shifted over to lean over her other eye. He gently pried her eyelids open again and blew gently upon her eye. Again, the burning subsided almost immediately. She sat up as he sat back on his heels. She lifted a hand to her cheek under her eye, and her fingers came away with a faint dusting of gold dust.

"Pollen from the dreamflowers," said Helios quietly. "You blinded yourself with your own energy." He blew again, onto his fingertips, though he did not take his eyes from hers, and then reached to brush his yellow-dusted fingers across her cheek. The stinging from a cut that she had not even noticed was there until he touched it vanished. "Do you have any more injuries?"

Rini shook her head mutely. Helios nodded and rose, offering her his hand. She pushed herself up without it, turning to follow his gaze, and saw that only a a few steps away from them, Endymion held Serenity in his arms. The princess's long white gown spilled across the Elysian grass. Tears clung to the her fair eyelashes. She had her face pressed to Endymion's chest.

"Endy…" she sobbed. Her thin shoulders shook above the puffed sleeves of her gown as she huddled against him. She seemed unable to hold herself up.

"Hush." Endymion crushed her close, his face pressed to her silvery hair. "Hush, darling. I am here. Nothing more shall hurt you, Serenity. I shall never let them have you again."

Rini shifted uncomfortably. Had neither of them noticed her and Helios standing behind them?

"But it will not end, Endymion." Serenity clutched his cape. "Not Diamond, anymore, but some other prince….my mother will not give me to the High Senshi without an heir."

"Your mother shall not give you to the High Senshi at all." Endymion crushed her closer, his lips to her hair. "For I will not be giving you back to her."

Serenity's head tilted backward, staring up at at him. The tears still glittered at her eyelashes. On her face was awe, a hope that barely dared to show itself. She breathed, "Truly, Endy?"

Endymion nodded, looking down at her. Then he bent his head and captured her lips with his. Rini looked away. Helios, too, was looking at the ground, flushing faintly.

A few moments later, Endymion's voice called, "Daughter!"

It took Rini a moment to realize that her was calling _her_. She stumbled forward with the help of Helios's hesitant hand nudging her shoulder. "Um." She looked up to see that he and the princess were no longer kissing, though Serenity was clinging to him even more closely than before. "Yes?"

"Serenity." Endymion looked down at the nymph in his arms, her face still buried in his neck. "This is our daughter. From the future. She came to warn me that that wretch would try to steal you."

Serenity lifted her head. Her face, still flawlessly pale and unswollen despite all her tears, turned to Rini. Her lavender eyes flicked across Rini's features.

"She is already adept at transforming," Endymion said. "Show your mother, ah–" He paused, frowning.

"Rini," Rini said.

"Rini," Endymion repeated. His forehead creased beneath his dark hair. Rini wondered if he did not like her name. "Show your mother how you can transform, Rini."

Rini did, transforming her ears to a cat's, remembering how Serena had stroked them, her eyes so tender and affectionate. But the princess wasn't even looking at her. Her hand was clenched in Endymion's tunic again, and she was staring up at him with more of that timid, undaring wonder. "She truly is from the future, Endymion? I really do live?"

Endymion placed another kiss on the princess's forehead. "You really do, beloved. Let Chaos do what It will with the other systems. My wife will stay where she belongs, here with me. Safe."

Rini's eyes widened. She looked at Helios and saw that he looked nearly as shocked as she was.

"Endy," Princess Serenity breathed again. "Really?"

"Really, my love." Endymion kissed her once more and looked to his Elysian priest. "Helios. Begin preparations for a wedding."


	40. Chapter 39

**A/N**: Thanks to all you reviewers helping to get STC to 900 reviews! **Special thanks** as always to **Jade**, who, in addition to being generally fantastic, has reintroduced me to the awesomeness that is _Batman Beyond_.

This chapter's **title **comes from Vienna Teng's song, **"The Tower,"** which begins:

_the one who survives by making the lives_

_of others worthwhile_

_she's coming apart_

Its lyrics, which are on the STC site with a link to the song, fit Serena so perfectly that the song could have been written about her. In addition, **The Tower** card in tarot cards decks represents crisis, a revelation or transformation, or being forced to abandon what you thought was true, which sums up this chapter pretty well.

**Gore** and **Situational **warnings.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Vienna Teng's song "The Tower." Nor do I own Sailor Moon.

**Timeline (Chapter 33-38):**

229. Darien's discovery that Mikai could be the princess brought Endymion's flash-form to the surface. With great effort, Sailor Pluto managed to keep him from breaking the memory block that contained the prince's memories of the princess.

230. Serena, sensing Darien's emotional upheaval and subsequent cutting-off of the rope, went to Mikai to try to find him. She came to the conclusion that Darien had cut off the rope because he had found out how Sailor Moon had seduced him and betrayed the princess in the Silver Millennium. She gave up trying to find him.

231. Darien skipped school the next day, and Asanuma and Motoki kept mum as to the reason why. When he did reappear at school, he treated Serena and the others coldly and distantly. Serena's depression deepened, especially as she felt that she was losing Rini, who continued to go to Elysion with Darien to train.

232. Tomoe tracked down Senator Hino, who refused to tell him what had happened to Hotaru. Tomoe administered a truth serum that killed Hino and found out that Hino's daughter, Sailor Mars, had come to take Hotaru.

233. While Emerald was with Tomoe, Diamond discovered Sailor Moon's location. He went to her, discovering her with a human youma in the alley, and destroyed the youma while rendering her unconscious so that she wouldn't see him. He followed her for the rest of the day, finally presenting himself to her when she was at an arcade. He hypnotized her.

234. Serena woke up the next morning with no memory of the previous night. That day the feeling of being watched followed her everywhere. When she fell asleep that night, Diamond reappeared and picked up where he had left off the night before.

235. While Buji and Rini waited after school for Asanuma to pick up a pizza, they were seen by Sapphire, who was following his brother. He read Rini's desires from her mind.

236. Serena's mind continued to resist Diamond's control, though she still had no memory of his hypnosis of her. She noticed cuts to her face that hadn't been there before.

237. When confronted by Asanuma, Darien explained that he was avoiding Serena because he needed to somehow prove to himself that Darien Shields existed, not just Endymion. Asanuma's questions drove Darien to Helios, who told him that Serena was nothing like Endymion's Moon Princess.

238. Haruka, having overheard Darien and Asanuma's conversation about Serena being the princess, went to confront her. He arrived just in time to save her from a youma. Wanting to hurt her and make her feel guilty, Haruka transformed and showed Sailor Moon how he had been turned into a freak by Sailor Uranus's possession of his body. But then Diamond arrived and, enraged by Uranus touching Serena, attacked.

239. Memories of all that Diamond did to her rushed into Moon. She tried to call for Darien, but Diamond's hypnosis was already paralyzing her. The realization that Diamond wanted Rini and knew where to find her gave Serena the power to claw free of Diamond's hypnosis and drive him off.

240. With Diamond gone, Moon went to Haruka and Michiru. Haruka, shocked that Serena wasn't disgusted by his half-female, half-male state, kissed her on the forehead before fleeing with Michiru. Just afterward, Jupiter and Rini appeared. Moon sent them both home to keep them safe from Diamond.

241. Moon spent the night in her bedroom, waiting for Diamond to return. When he did, his hypnosis immediately paralyzed her again. He revealed to her that he made a deal with Chaos so that she would be able to stay safely with him if he took Rini to Chaos. Again, the chance of Rini being in danger gave Serena the strength to break free of Diamond's mind control.

242. At the same time, Tuxedo Mask arrived. Diamond sent him flying back out the window before Serena sent a Twilight Flash burning through his abdomen. He disappeared. Mask reached for Serena, trying to make sure she was alright, only for her to yank away from him and tell him, "Don't touch me." She left.

243. Diamond returned to the Black Moon mother ship, gravely injured. As Sapphire stitched him up, Diamond told him that the reason he wants to have the Moon Princess, whose power has alienated her to the entire galaxy, is because she reminds him of Sapphire, whose gyptian mind-reading powers alienated him to the entire Nemisian court. Sapphire, overwhelmed with love for his brother, reveals a plan for Diamond to get the Moon Princess: use Rini's power to go back in time to the Silver Millennium and woo Serenity there.

244. Rini spent the night with Jupiter, worrying about how frightened and tired Serena had looked. When they returned to Serena's house in the morning, Rini sensed that Serena was gone and Darien, his aura agitated and angry, was in the tree. Anger exploded within her, because Darien was the reason Serena had looked so tired and scared these past weeks. She sprang at him, wanting to make him hurt the same way she did, and told him that Serena was dead in her future.

245. Haruka explained to Michiru how he started out a normal child and then grew into what he was. Then he decided to leave, to find Rei and Saturn so that he could save Serena from going to hell. He left and Michiru stayed behind.

246. Serena appeared at school that day, as distant as Darien had acted over the past few weeks. She avoided him until asking him to hypnotize her parents so that they would be safe and out of the house while she was at the track meet that weekend. She sent Rini to stay in Elysion.

247. In Elysion, Rini realized she didn't have her snow globe. She went back to Serena's room to get it – and saw a youma in the road. She ran to fight it.

248. Lanai landed back on Earth. On her heels was Sailor Mnemosyne, another High Senshi. They were quickly joined by Mnemosyne's sister, Sailor Lethe, who had been on Earth while Lanai was gone, disguised as Serena and Darien's teammate, Sei Le. She accused Lanai of getting too close to Serena but was cut off when they all felt Rini's aura, mixed with a Chaos one.

249. Rushing with the other two to find Rini, Lanai recognized the presence the child was fighting was a human turned into a youma. Before she could say anything, Lethe killed it. This angered Rini, who glared at Lanai. Lethe reminded Lanai of her duty: to take the dangerously powerful child to Galaxia.

250. Just as Lanai aimed her attack at Rini, Diamond leapt out, grabbing the child. He teleported away with her to the park. There, he explained to her how the Wiseman had taken control of his people and made her an offer: if she would take him to the past to get the Moon Princess to help save his people, he would help her make sure that the past changed so that Serena would be her mother. Rini agreed, and they disappeared just as the Wiseman appeared.

251. Meanwhile, Mikai and Asanuma realized that all the human youma have the same powers as the Senshi and Shittenou currently in Tokyo–and currently attending Infinity! They came to the conclusion that Tomoe must be behind it and, they realized when they receive a call from Motoki that his dad's back in the hospital, he must be behind Furuhata-san's illness as well. They called Darien.

252. Darien and Serena rushed back to Tokyo, but on the way Helios contacted them with the news that Rini has disappeared. They sensed her aura disappearing with one that Serena recognized as Diamond's. The Wiseman appeared to them and told them how to go back in time to get Rini and prevent Diamond from taking the Moon Princess for his own.

253. When Diamond and Rini arrived in the Time Plane, Sailor Pluto attacked them. But Rini's power was too much for her; she was left in a heap as Rini and Diamond stepped through the Time Gate. They arrived in the palace gardens in the Silver Millennium.

254. At the hospital, Mikai and Asanuma discovered Buji with the Furuhatas; Mayuko is in labor. When they tried to see Furuhata, a youma disguised as an orderly stopped them, for Tomoe was sneaking both Furuhata-san and Mayuko out of the hospital! The Shittenou rushed after them, following Tomoe to his clinic.

255. In the Silver Millennium, Diamond hypnotized Luna to believe he had an audience with the queen. Rini, disguised as a rose in his hand, listened as he asked Queen Selenity for the moon princess's hand in marriage. Queen Selenity, after some consideration, agreed.

256. Handed off to the Senshi as a gift for their princess, Rini (still in rose form) listened intently for Sailor Moon's voice. It never came: instead, when Rini transformed into her human body to heal the injuries the princess's stomping had given her, she saw that Princess Serenity was none other than Serena. The Senshi woke and attacked her, and Rini fled to Elysion.

257. Meanwhile, the Silver Millennium's Sailor Pluto had just finished writing her message to the High Senshi, describing the man who had traveled back through time to the moon palace. She had to hide the message when Queen Selenity entered the Time Plane to ask her if marrying Serenity to someone other than Endymion was the right thing, but as she spoke to her, she sneaked it into a mirror, sending it to the High Council. Distracted by her guilt, she didn't noticed Serena and Darien arriving in the Silver Millennium.

258. Only the arrival of the Luna Ball saved Darien and Serena from suffocating where they had landed on the moon. Identifying itself as a servant of the Moon Queen, the ball told them they must get to Diamond and Rini before time was ruined and led them toward the moon palace.

259. At Tomoe's clinic, Emerald and her youma were waiting to prevent the Shittenou from reaching Furuhata and Mayuko. One by one they peeled off until only Motoki was left to descend into Tomoe's lab.

260. Darien began to worry that Serena still had not adapted to the moon's temperature; she was shivering, her teeth chattering, ceaselessly. He insisted on them resting, and they both fell asleep. In a conversation they had when they woke up, Darien revealed that he thought she was the Moon Princess and Serena revealed that she was actually the Moon Princess's secret bodyguard.

261. Darien apologized for thinking that Serena could be the princess and for cutting her off from the rope. Serena, devastated that he was only sorry for these things because she _wasn't_ the princess, remembered what Diamond did to her, and Darien broke into her mind to see the memories. In a burst of anger, Serena hurled him out and ended up in his mind instead, seeing his memory of when Rini told him that Serena would be dead in the future.

262. When Serena tried to keep on moving as though this news didn't matter, Darien tried to convince her to give up on saving Rini. Angry words flew between them before ending with Serena giving back to Darien the locket he gave her for Christmas.

263. In Elysion, Rini met Prince Endymion. At first he believed her to be some sort of Chaos minion, but when she showed him the animal transformations that Darien had taught her, he believed that she was his future daughter with the Moon Princess. He seemed extremely pleased with her while Rini herself was surprised by how different he was from Darien. She was also slightly unnerved by the speed from which his mood went from pleasant to angry, making her too scared to tell him that she had voluntarily helped Diamond come to the past. They went to the moon to find Serenity and save her from Diamond.

264. Back on the moon, Diamond and Serenity were walking through the palace gardens, Diamond trapping Serenity under his hypnosis. When he arrived on the moon and saw them, Endymion, not realizing Serenity was being controlled by Diamond, believed her to have betrayed him. His anger and inability to control it brought the Senshi to the spot, where they attacked Endymion. Rini told him that Diamond was controlling Serenity, so Endymion snatched her back from the prince, and Serenity stayed weakly in his arms, not helping him against her Senshi or, when she arrived on the scene, her mother.

265. As Queen Selenity gathered her power to kill Endymion, Rini shouted at Serenity to use her powers to protect them. She didn't. Instead, Rini's own power lashed out to counter Selenity's, and Rini took all three of them back to Elysion. There, Endymion swore to Serenity that he would never give her back to her mother or to the High Senshi. Instead, she would stay and be married to him.

L

**Subject to Change**

Season 2

Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Tower

L

Serena broke into a run as they made their way away from the tower. She ran so fast that Darien could not keep up, though he tried until his lungs burned. She ran so fast that she stumbled over her own feet and went sprawling hard to the ground. Darien's tail lashed the air as he sped to her to help her up. She was already shoving herself up and running off again before he could help her…but not before he could see the tears streaming down her face.

The Luna Ball, newly awoken, bounced back to him, hovering atop his muzzle. "What did you do?" it demanded fiercely.

Darien's only reply was to run faster.

L

Rini hurried after her parents through the lush green gardens of Endymion's Golden Palace. The plants here were far more real, more alive, than those in the Moon gardens had been, but there was no room in her mind to enjoy it. Apprehension swarmed her thoughts.

Was this right? Had this fixed things? Serenity and Endymion were going to be together now, they were going to be _married_–but was that right? Endymion had said that he wouldn't let Serenity fight Chaos. Did that mean Chaos would take over?

If they didn't fight Chaos, the prince and princess wouldn't die. So Serena and Darien and Lita wouldn't be born, because there would be no need for reincarnations. The thought made Rini stumble. This wasn't what she had intended, this wasn't what she had wanted_–_

And yet, wasn't it? She had wanted a mom and dad who would stay with her instead of going to fight Chaos.

"Daughter!"

Rini looked up. Endymion had paused and turned to wait for her. Serenity was held bridal-style in his arms. She lay limp in them, her head lolling against his chest as though it was too heavy for her to hold up.

"Quickly," he snapped out. "Go fetch Zoicite."

_Zoicite?_ she thought in confusion, having no idea who this was, and in panic, too, because surely it was not a good sign that Serenity looked so ill? But before she could panic too much, a set of footsteps came running down the marble hall in which they stood. Rini looked and saw four men in tunics striding, almost running, toward them.

Endymion turned, shouldering open a door that was flanked by two stiff, blank-faced guards. The four men followed him inside, not speaking as Endymion made his way through a set of antechambers and into a room with a bed, where he carefully laid the princess. The men split up, two flanking the doorway as the guards outside had and the other two remaining closer to the bed and to Endymion. As their powerful auras coiled tensely around them, Rini realized who they must be, despite their entirely unfamiliar appearances: the Shittenou.

"Endymion, what have you done?" The tallest of them, a dark-skinned man with long, light hair, who had remained closer to the bed, was staring at the princess lying on it. Rini could understand the alarm streaking his aura: the princess looked frightfully unwell, her head and arms limp, her eyes unfocused.

"Rumors are racing across the system," said one of the Shittenou guarding the door. He was the only one of them who seemed anything like the Shittenou she knew; his sly grin and short blonde hair, though straighter and lighter than Asanuma's, reminded her of him, "that Terra's second most eligible bachelor after myself has kidnapped the Moon Princess."

The brown-haired Shittenou also at the doorway shot his partner a glare, then looked back at Endymion. "Please say they're unfounded."

"They are not unfounded, but they shall soon be eclipsed by a much more important piece of news." Endymion shouldered through them to the door. "The Terran Prince and the Moon Princess are to be married tomorrow morning."

"Your Highness!" gasped four voices.

"You cannot be serious–"

"Have you lost your mind? Your people are already–"

"Do you want us all to die? The High Senshi will have our heads!"

"Unless Queen Selenity takes them first!"

It was the tallest one who stepped closer to Endymion, leaning toward the prince's ear as he sat on the bed beside Serenity. "Endymion, please," he said lowly. "The princess cannot even keep her head up in our gravity. You cannot possibly hope that she will survive more than a week here."

"I will decide what I can and cannot hope for, Malachite," Endymion said sharply. "The combined strength of our crystals will sustain her."

"Prince. Please. Think–what would your father say? With the kingdom in its current state–"  
"He is dead, so it hardly matters." Endymion looked away, and then, seeing that the Asanuma-like Shittenou had leaned thoughtfully toward Rini, made a warning sound. "Jadeite! Stay away from her."

The blond straightened up. "What_ is_ she?"

"My daughter," Endymion said. "And she could vaporize any of you with a blink of her eyes, so do not irk her or me." He sent a warning glare around at them. "Zoicite, attend to the princess. Summon servants for anything you need, but Serenity is not to be moved from my chambers."

The only Shittenou who hadn't spoken yet, a slight man with wavy hair pulled back into a ponytail, slipped around the others to crouch at the bedside, putting his fingers to the inside of the princess's wrist, then her neck. Rini chewed the inside of her cheek nervously as she watched him.

"Nephrite," Endymion continued, "begin preparations for the wedding. We will need a holy man. Malachite–prepare to deal with Serenity's Senshi."

The white-haired man paled. "Endymion-sama…"

"We shall see if your Venusian loves you well enough not to kill you," said Endymion. "Jadeite, I will not warn you again."

Rini looked up and realized that Jadeite had been leaning close to inspect her again.

The Shittenou straightened. "Rather old, isn't she, Endy?" he drawled. "She can't be any younger than six, and the princess is sixteen, which means you must have bedded dear Serenity before the rest of us even knew what bedding was–"

Endymion's face was white with rage. The white-haired general was even paler than before and trying to pull Jadeite from the room. "Prince, I implore that you forgive Jadeite's–"

Endymion raised a hand, cutting off the man's plea. His eyes were chips of ice. "Show me such disrespect again, Jadeite," he said softly, "and you shall be sent onto the front lines against the High Senshi with your vile tongue as your only weapon."

Both generals bowed low, very low, and quickly exited the room. Endymion watched the closing door for a moment before turning back to the bed where Serenity lay. Rini reluctantly came closer when he glanced over his shoulder and caught her eye, his order evident even without words: _come here_. Her hands were sweating, her uneasiness growing with each step. Darien frequently fought with Asanuma, and rather violently at that, but never something like this…

_And_, she realized,_ he used my power as a threat._ He seemed to revel in her abilities, whereas Serena and Darien always tried to help her rein them in.

Zoicite stepped away from the bed and left the room, murmuring something about stabilizing herbs. On the massive bed, Serenity was very still, but Rini could sense that her pulse was racing. She had noticed the princess's limpness and pallor before, but now that Malachite had brought it up, she could imagine the delicate heart, intended for half as much gravity, struggling against the immense weight pressing down on it. Even her delicately veined eyelids seemed too heavy for her to lift; she was struggling to lift them more than halfway open.

"Endymion," she whispered through barely moving lips.

"In a moment, my love." The prince was stripping off his armor, pulling on different armguards and an overshirt, black embroidered with gold. They looked far more ceremonial than his leather tunic. "I must go wage a war with the courtiers. They will try to fight our marriage."

"Don't leave…"

"Our daughter will be with you." Endymion clasped Rini's shoulder as he leaned past her to kiss the wan princess, then strode from the chamber. Rini felt locking enchantments weave around the door that he shut behind them.

L

Diamond swiped a hand across his mouth. His teeth had slammed down on his tongue when that blasted Endymion sent him into the pillar. His blood tasted salty in his mouth, far more bitter than that of the princess's hologram.

He grimaced at the Senshi standing before him. He had hypnotized the _princess_. Did they think _their_ pitiful powers would stand up to his?

The eye on his forehead went wide, and they all went still, paralyzed. He grinned, once, finally, and then vanished.

The subterranean depths to which he teleported were as cold as any of the voids that the Dark Crystal could create, and much wetter. Ice-coated rock slid beneath his boots, and his fingers, brushing against the tight confines of the tunnel, felt wet when he pulled them away.

Though it was too pitch-black for him to see anything until he opened his third eye again, this place reminded him of Nemesis. He picked up his pace, clambering down the rough-hewn stone steps that the High Senshi had described to him. The eye in his forehead cast a beam of light before him like a headlamp, illuminating the rock, which was too basaltic even to glitter.

Soon enough, his eye's faint yellowish light was tainted by a darker one, a bloody orange. The steps ended. Putting a hand to the icy wall, Diamond stepped out of the tight tunnel into a gaping cavern. It was the size at least of his mother ship, stretching hundreds and hundreds of meters away and upward. At its other end, a swarm of enchantments writhed, racing around a fixed radius. Deep inside the enchantments stirred a blackish-brown aura, ancient and massive. It rippled like a vague shadow of a whale visible miles away in an ocean, drifting restlessly back and forth. Then it rushed forward, looming close and large.

"_WHO GOES?_"

In a way, it reminded him of his first encounter with Rubeus. Here was a creature who had been trapped for an eternity, completely and totally aware, its rage festering deeper and deeper with every century that scraped past.

Here was a creature a hundred times more powerful than Rubeus had been.

"I have come to free Her Highness Metallia," Diamond shouted, and his voice echoed in the caverns.

"_YES?_" the creature hissed deafeningly. _"AND HOW WILL A BOY LIKE YOURSELF BREAK THE BINDING ENCHANTMENTS THAT EVEN I HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO LOOSEN?_"

Diamond reached inside his coat, to the void he kept between his ribs, and pulled forth a key that pulsed with blood enchantments.

"With enchantments from the same Senshi who imprisoned you," he said.

L

In a barren field outside Terra's royal city where a force of dissatisfied peasants had gathered to take their grievances to their ruler, a dark shadow streaked through the night and the dimming campfires. It flew into a tent where a red-haired girl slept, shivering in the cold air beneath a threadbare blanket and an even more threadbare dress. Above her parted lips its hovered for a moment, growing until its shadows swayed across the tent's wall like shadows cast by a campfire. Then it swooped into the girl's mouth.

A ripple of power, silent, but piercing to any who had any sensitivity to aura, buckled the land for a hundred miles around.

And then the girl opened her eyes.

L

Rini jerked awake, her eyes wide and blood pounding, as though from a nightmare. She stared around blearily, her hand automatically going up to her side to grab Serena's hand where it always ended up flopping up over the side of her bed. But there was only empty air, and Rini remembered, looking around at the tremendous bed and masculine furniture of Endymion's bedchamber, that she was in the Silver Millennium.

And something was wrong. Rini couldn't figure out what it was until she crawled up from where she must have fallen asleep on the floor while she was watching Zoicite watch the princess, and saw that Zoicite was gone and that motionless princess's condition had worsened even further. The tips of her fingers, previously snow-white, had begun to take on a bluish tinge. And her heartbeat! Rini was no doctor, but even she knew that the rapid, shallow heartbeat she heard – fast fast fast–couldn't be good. It sounded like a heart racing death.

Grabbing her knapsack from the floor, Rini padded silently toward the door. She was of half a mind to take Serenity to Elysion herself, but she feared what Endymion would do if he returned and found Serenity missing. She had to find him or one of the Shittenou first.

In the antechamber, the blond Shittenou was watching a pane of glass mounted on the wall. It was decoratively gilt-edged like a mirror but had hazy images in it like a television. When Rini came in, he turned quickly, making a motion with his hand, and the images vanished. What didn't vanish was the sounds of shouting and metal clashing, which were muffled, but audible through the chamber's one shuttered window.

"What's going on?"

"Just a little hubbub, Princess." Jadeite's jaw was tense, his eyes hard and gleaming. "Not everyone is tickled pink with delight that your parents are going to tie the knot."

Rini remembered what Queen Selenity had said about the High Senshi having tried to assassinate Endymion. Were they attacking, trying to kill him before he could marry Serenity? Or had Queen Selenity herself brought soldiers to take care of it?

Before she could ask this of Jadeite, the antechamber's outer doors burst open. "Gaea's blood!" Endymion stormed inside, his tunic singed and torn. Golden sparks danced at a long red cut on his cheek beneath his angry eyes. "My own people attacking us!"

Malachite and the other Shittenou followed Endymion more calmly into the room. "Zoicite warned you, Sire. The rice yield in the Eastern provinces has been abysmal since your father died. All that energy put toward teleporting to see your princess would have been better spent giving them rain so that they would have food in their bellies instead of rebellion on their minds."

Endymion turned sharply. "Surely, Malachite, you do not mean to imply that this is _my_ fault?"

There was silence, as taut as the rope of a noose. Rini could taste the tension, every air molecule fairly buzzing with it.

Finally, Malachite bowed his head. "I do not, Your Majesty. I offer my deepest apologies if the way I phrased my concerns gave that impression."

Endymion twitched a hand dismissively and started toward the bedchamber door. "To prove the sincerity of your apology, you may take care of that uprising for me. I care not what methods are necessary, only that its participants are unable to do anything during my marriage ceremony." He looked at Malachite meaningfully, then disappeared into the inner bedchamber.

Rini's eyes were wide. Surely the look Endymion had just given Malachite didn't mean that he didn't care if Malachite had to kill his subjects or imprison them to get them out of the way? She peered from beneath her bangs at the generals, who looked as white-faced as she felt. Malachite moved jerkily toward the door, out into the outermost chamber, and she found herself ghosting after the other Shittenou as they followed him.

Jadeite grabbed Malachite's arm as he reached for the outer door. "Malachite, these people are not traitors, just starving–"

"I know!" Malachite shook off his arm.

"Then do not go," Nephrite said quietly.

Malachite's lips thinned. "I have no choice."

"You do," Jadeite said fiercely, grabbing his arm again. "We can go out there and fight alongside our people. With us as his opponents, Endymion will have to think twice about getting rid of them."

"He cannot risk losing our support now that he has angered the Moon Queen," Zoicite added somberly.

Malachite's mouth was still compressed, but his forehead was creased with pain. "Brothers, he is our prince."

"And they are our people." Jadeite dropped Malachite's arm. "I for one am going to help them."

He strode down the hallway, yanking a ring from his finger and dropping it to the floor as he went. It clattered down the hall until it rolled to a stop against Malachite's boots. They all looked down at it, and Rini could see it was a signet ring made of gold wrought in the shape of an _E_ in the middle of Terra's symbol.

"Fare well, brother." Nephrite took off his own ring and clasped Malachite's shoulder. Zoicite silently did the same, and then they both strode after Jadeite.

A silent moment passed, Malachite's hair falling over his face as he bowed his head. Rini inched backward toward the door so that she could slip back inside without him realizing she had witnessed the entire scene, but his head jerked up at a scuff of her foot. His eyes snapped to hers. Panic flared from him. "Princess–"

"I'm sorry," she blurted out.

His face went immediately blank. "What?"

She felt wretched and scared. "For–for my parents."

His icy eyes softened. "You give me hope," he murmured. His hand came to touch her shoulder, and she felt something like impressions of his memories or his thoughts washing over her: Endymion was not bad, it was just that the old king had given him everything, everything and anything, so that Endymion never really _wanted_ anything, until the time came that he was told that there was one thing–one person–he could never have. And then he wanted her, the first time he ever wanted anything, and he took her. And now he would keep her, no matter what, and it was selfish, it was horrible, but a part of Malachite, the part that dreamed of blue eyes and golden hair, was envious of that stubborn, blind determination.

A shout came from within the chambers. Rini and Malachite yanked apart, the white and gold fading from their eyes, and raced into the innermost chamber. Endymion was there, propping up a limp Serenity, his eyes wide and crackling with power.

"Breathe!" he was shouting, his aura and the Golden Crystal in his hand spiking in time with his volume. "Breathe, Serenity, please! Breathe, damn it–"

At that moment, the window at the other end of the chamber exploded inward.

Rini shouted out. A jet of power burst from her just as Malachite had tackled her to the ground and yanked up a wall of stone to shield them, and the jet blasted through the wall. But it made no difference, for the malevolent black aura that had punched through the window was not aiming for them. It was uncoiling itself at the feet of Endymion, who had thrown himself over Serenity and shielded them both with golden power. Malachite shoved Rini behind him, but not before she saw that the black aura wasn't just some shadowy creature: it was housed inside a human body, a painfully thin woman with hair like flame and a ragged purple dress.

She opened her mouth, and shadow and words slithered out. "_How kind, Endymion, you've killed the moon witch for me."_

"Prince!" Malachite shouted. "Flee! Take the princess to Elysion!"

Still holding Serenity, Endymion lifted power-burning eyes. It seemed to take him a moment to see Malachite through the haze of his own power, but finally he nodded. Then he and the princess were gone.

"_NO!_" The red-haired woman's shriek tore through Rini's ears. She whirled on Malachite, eyes ablaze, hands outstretched. A blizzard of crystals tore out of them toward Malachite and Rini.

Malachite's aura spiked; more stone jumped in front of them. The crystals smashed into it, clattering to the floor with a sound like chimes. Then there were larger thuds, and cracks appeared in the dark stone.

"Princess," Malachite managed through gritted teeth, "you must follow them. Go to Elysion."

"But–" Rini flinched as crystals suddenly thudded down around them, creating a cage. Her heard jerked back, and she saw the woman hovering at the ceiling, grinning down at them and a fresh spate of spear-like crystals floating around her hand. They hurtled down.

"GO!" He shoved her, and then Rini was tumbling through wildflowers, her cheek stinging. She threw out a hand, catching herself, and touching her cheek with the other. Her fingers came away red.

"Princess!"

She looked up and saw Helios running toward her. But her mind was still full of Malachite, of how he had shoved her out of the way, how those deadly crystals had hurtled down. She closed her eyes, and she was back in Endymion's dark palace chamber.

The sunlight from the shattered window had vanished, as though thunderclouds had drowned out the sun. The only light in the room came from inside the ring of embedded crystals. Malachite lay there, impaled by crystals in so many places that the sight made Rini's knees buckle beneath her. The red-haired woman was crouched above him, her eyes swirling black. Black aura poured from her eyes and mouth into his. His body glowed faint blue as it struggled against the black energy, but it was losing, and rapidly, the defiance fading from his eyes and leaving them blank.

_"You let them leave,"_ the woman hissed. _"But you will work for me now, Shittenou."_ She wrenched one of the crystals from where it pinned his arm to the floor and brought it to her mouth, running her tongue along the blood.

There was a flash of black light, and then the crystals were all gone, and Malachite stood whole and blank-eyed beside the woman. And they were both looking at Rini.

_"Kill her."_

Malachite took three swift steps toward Rini. Eyes wide, she took three steps back and disappeared.

Helios's hands seized her the moment she reappeared in Elysion. "Princess!"

"Helios," she gasped. "Malachite–!"

Helios's face was stricken but not surprised. Rini belatedly realized that wind was whipping all around them, streaks of whispers racing past her ears. Had Helios already heard what had happened? "Someone has released a terrible demon," he translated shakily. "She possessed the leader of dissidents on Earth to make them attack the palace, and now she is releasing her youma forces on the moon! She is taking the Shittenou with her to fight the Senshi!"

That made Rini realize what she had forgotten. "Endymion and Serenity!"

"He took her to the moon so that she could live," Helios whispered brokenly, "but now they will both die."

A particularly loud whisper hissed past them, and Helios flinched as though he had been whipped. "The Moon Queen is on the brink of death."

Rini stared at him. Her mind howled as though full of the same winds that whipped all around them. What should she do? Stay here, where it was safe, let the Silver Millennium fall as it was supposed to? But how could she let them die? Even if Serenity and Endymion weren't the parents she had wanted, even if their surviving meant Serena and Darien wouldn't exist–how could she just sit back and let them die without trying to save them? Serena would never do that–

"Great Gaea," Helios breathed suddenly, and when Rini's eyes snapped to his, she saw they were glowing gold, focused on nothing. "Who–"

"What?" Rini seized his arm, nails digging in. "What is it?"

"Two auras joining the fight," Helios murmured, his voice confused and wondering. "Another moon princess…and my prince? But how–"

Rini's mind flashed to what she had thought only seconds before. _Serena would never do that_–

Her heart gave a throb in her chest. "They're here." She was crying, suddenly. "They came!" And then she was spinning away from Helios, running from him into nothingness and emerging into the middle of a battle. Youma and the white-clad Lunarian guards fought all around her, their cries and roars muted in the thin, deadening air of the moon.

But Rini's attention was not for any of the guards or youma. Her eyes went immediately to the fountain five meters away from her, the one she had seen before, with Endymion: she was in Serenity's private garden. Endymion stood in front of the fountain, his sword drawn and crackling with fierce energy as he split his attention between fending off youma and shouting at the red-haired woman hovering in the air high above him. The air around her boiled with black power.

Behind Endymion, huddled beneath the lip of the fountain, was a figure wrapped in his cloak and shivering. From her position, Rini could see the silvery hair peeking from beneath the drawn hood and knew it was the princess. There was no time for her to wish that the princess would stand up and fight, for her eyes were travelling past the cloaked figure to where she caught a glimpse of golden hair.

_Serena!_

Then energy erupted, and everything went wrong.

L

"You've got to be kidding me." Crashing back into his human form, Tuxedo Mask stared at the sky above the palace. His eyes were wide behind his mask. There were _youma _pouring out of the sky. It was filled with black voids like the ones the Black Moon used, blotting out the starscape like dozens of black holes, and youma tumbled out of each in one a steady, scaly, furry, deadly stream.

The familiar sensation of Serena transforming exploded in the back of Mask's mind, and he whirled back to her, throwing out a hand to catch her. But she was already darting past him in her fuku, her sword glowing in her hand.

"_No_!" yowled the Luna Ball–for once, it and Mask were in agreement. But whatever else the creature had to say went unheard, for Mask blurred after Moon, his blood roaring in his ears.

Minutes, or hours, passed, he had no way of knowing which, as they made their way through the mangled palace walls and into what looked like gardens. Sweat poured down his face, and his awareness narrowed to his cane and roses in his hands, Moon's bright aura a step ahead of his, and the youma he felt attacking them.

Swirl, slash, duck. Dart, stab, duck. It was like the Christmas festival all over again except that this time he killed without the worry of human youma. With his psychometric senses heightened by months of blindness, he could as easily sense what bodies around him belonged to youma and what belonged to non-youma as he could sense what was air and what was ground. In any other situation this would have been easy.

But the youma were _endless_. Even without using aura-dependent attacks like fire- or earth-manipulation, and relying only on his cane-blade, Mask's energy began to flag. As exhaustion forced him to move more slowly, he was able actually to see some of the youma he was cutting down instead of merely sensing them through the tunnel perception of his psychometry. Several he could have he recognized–the blue youma that had worked with Jadeite on that fake cruise ship, the gel-like one from the Saffron talent competition, the red one that had turned Serena into a human tennis ball. A single slash of his cane reduced them all to piles of dust, and the tiny corner of his mind that was still thinking instead of merely fighting registered surprise that they had once had such a difficult time disposing of such weak youma.

Swirl, slash, duck. There were other gushes of power battling around him, some faintly familiar, like one that tanged of lightning. Serena's burned brighter than any of them, silver and burning, searching, and he followed her like a shadow, ears strained over the clamor of metal and claws and screams for her cries that weren't loud enough, her cries of "Rini! _Rini!_"

He glimpsed her tiara searing through the midsection of another youma that seemed familiar–it was the first youma they had ever faced, the one impersonating Molly's mother at the jewelry store. Inspiration hit him, and he spun to call out to Moon–

But she had already remembered it herself. He sensed, like breath being sucked into his own throat, her inhalation. And then came the desperate scream, amplified by her red odango barrettes.

"_RINIIIIII!_"

The scream tore across the battlefield like a shockwave. Mask sensed hundreds of youma around them waver, some flickering out.

Others flared up like bloodhounds catching a scent.

Mask obliterated the youma around him in a burst of sheer power like the one he had used on Metallia after she absorbed them. Then he pounded after Moon, who had sensed the same interest-heightened auras that he had and was running toward them.

Each pound of his feet chipped away at his psychometric tunnel vision until, as he caught up to Moon, he was looking through his eyes alone, panting and taking in their surroundings. They were inside a different set of walls now, in a garden filled with Terran roses whose auras eagerly reached for his. Sailor Moon's scream had not made the same impact here as it had outside: battles continued fast and ferocious. Sparks and gushes of blinding, colorful light crashed and roared everywhere he looked, and the clutter of auras was so thick that he could barely untangled one from another. Only one stood out, a tremendous familiar black one hanging high above all the rest: Metallia.

"Rini!" Moon screamed again, looking every which way, not paying attention to the battles around her, scrambling up from the ground when someone's attack made it shake as though in an earthquake and sent her to her knees. "Rini!" She fought her way deeper into the garden.

But Tuxedo Mask couldn't move. His eyes were pinned to two figures half-hidden behind a cracked, spilling fountain. He was at least three meters away, but the very air molecules between the figures screamed familiarity into his senses, like a strong odor burning into his nose and making his eyes water.

The larger shape stood, drawing a sword from a sheath at his belt. He turned, shouting something up at Metallia's black aura boiling above them. Darien's heart jumped into his mouth.

He was staring at his own profile.

That was Endymion. That man, running forward and slashing golden light up at Beryl's Metallia-possessed body, was Prince Endymion.

Darien's eyes slipped back to the form huddled at the foot of the fountain. He could see white peeking out from beneath the cloak's hem, silver spilling out over the cloak's collar.

A white dress and silver hair, all that he'd ever seen of the Moon Princess in his dreams.

He sensed the boil of Metallia's power welling up toward her. It was subtle, and had his psychometry not been so finely honed by months of blindness, he wouldn't have sensed it. It swelled faintly, subtly, curling in the thin air like smoke.

There was time for him to jump in front of it. But he thought of Serena's wet eyes, her scarred face, the way her shoulders had shaken as she crouched on the ground struggling not to cry. He thought about what it would be like if she was gone, forever, because she had risked her life for that princess cowering on the ground.

And he didn't move.

L

Moon felt the shock that ripped through Mask's aura. She spun around, fighting her way back through the crush of youma and guards, as conflict raged through Darien. Then, just as she broke through the last of the youma and spotted him frozen a few meters away from her, black energy exploded above her.

It burned through the air and straight into a cloaked figure huddled at the base of a fountain. For a moment, the person did not move, and Moon thought that he or she must have had some force field like the Wiseman did that deflected attacks. Then the person toppled backward onto the flagstones, and the cloak's hood fell back to reveal silver hair pulled into odangos and dead lavender eyes.

Screams rang out from all around them. Deafening laughter from Metallia's hovering darkness filled the sky–until a roar of rage tore through the air.

Golden energy hurtled into the sky and ripped into her. Her laughter turned to screams, and the light continued, thundering and snarling and flaring like a fireworks display that had gone off all at once instead of in stages, like ravening wolves ripping into a sheep. The golden light wasn't coming from Mask, who had fallen to his knees, staring at the dead girl on the ground. It came from another black-haired man, one in armor who stood a few feet from them both.

Endymion.

The last of Metallia's screams died as her shadow streaked out of the body she had possessed and disappeared. The youma around them disintegrated.

Endymion spun. Murder burned blindly in his glowing eyes, which were fixed on Mask. He roared, "_You let her die_!"

His sword was up, it was swinging, it was driving straight toward Mask's chest. Moon felt a scream tearing out of her throat. Whether it was in terror for Darien or for what she was about to do, there was no time to wonder. There was only time to run faster than she ever had before, blurring–

the stab

–and then there was all the time in the world.

She hung suspended on that cold metal she knew so well. The familiar salty warmth filled her mouth, explosions and screams all around her. It was comforting, really, to have finally reached this point of the dream. In a few seconds she would wake up and creep downstairs for celery to chase the bloody taste from her mouth…

"No." Darien had to be dreaming, there was no way this could have happened, he had to be dreaming that the Moon Princess had been Serena and he'd let her die and that Serena was dying in front of him, too. Impossible. Impossible.

_ "So if I had been the princess, then it would have been okay to let all that happen to me?"_

"Serena." The scream wasn't his. "SERENA!"

A blur of brown and white tore through his vision. It launched itself into the red-splattered body strewn across his lap where his numb, numb arms held her shoulders. It sobbed fiercely, bitterly. Darien glimpsed wet eyes glowing white before power began to build, Rini's burning white power, screaming like her voice–and then she was gone.

L

The Silver Millennium's Sailor Pluto stared at the carnage.

The Outer Senshi, dead. Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, dead. Venus, as good as dead. The princess, dead. And now, the last light extinguishing in Queen Selenity's eyes as her Silver Crystal slipped from her limp fingers, still sparkling with her final wish…

Pluto let out an anguished cry. Then she broke into a run. Through the sands, toward the sanctum, down the steps, barely looking where she was going. Just following the burn in her chest and her eyes. She heard the splashing of water around her boots before she felt the icy water seeping through them to touch her feet. Horror thudding in her ears, she looked down.

Water was gushing over the lip of the Fountain of the Past.

Her knees trembled in her wet boots.

"Hello!" A voice wafted down into the darkness. "Is anyone there? Please!"

The desperation in that voice. The fear. Pluto's insides began to shiver along with the rest of her, quaking inside her until she thought she might vomit. It was a child's voice calling out. How had a child gotten here? Had Chronos sent it here, sent a child orphaned by the very youma Pluto had allowed to be set free, to torture her with guilt for the sin she had committed?

"_Please_! Sailor Pluto!"

Pluto's pulse banged to a stop. She turned, and saw a small shape stumbling down the darkened sanctum steps.

L

The power didn't stop building when Rini vanished. It burned and swelled, silvery-white, and if Darien had not been so numb he would have screwed his eyes shut lest he lost his vision again, but what use was there for sight if all there was to see was Serena's _corpse_–

Then the body in his arms jerked. Its muscles spasmed as though needles had stabbed into every nerve in its body. Serena's mouth stretched in a silent scream, lips trembling around small white teeth. Then her eyes shot wide, blind, boring through him with swirling blue irises that crackled with silver.

A crystal burst out of the red wound in her chest.

It was the source of the scalding, blinding power, the size of his fist and slowly revolving as it hovered above Serena's chest. But Darien wasn't looking at it. He was watching Serena's face, the tears pouring from her crackling eyes, sizzling as they rolled down her cheeks and hissing into vapor as they hit the scars on her face. The scars burned bright silver like threads of lava glowing in cooling magma. Like stitches being pulled out, like a rewind in fast forward, the silver darkened into angry red blood and to gentle purple bruises, then paled to unmarked white skin. When they were completely gone, only one spot on her face still glowed: a golden crescent moon on her forehead.

"_Serenity_," breathed a voice.

Darien looked up and saw Endymion. The prince had dropped to his knees, staring at Serena. Darien looked back down at her, his arms tightening around her, beginning to tremble as he saw that her skin was still paling, become whiter and more translucent than he had ever seen her before and that her hair was beginning to lighten, silver streaks traveling through the blonde. Terror twisted his insides. Was she going to continue to change, her hair darkening to the same silver as her eyes, until she was Endymion's Serenity? The same Serenity whom he had just let die? It was the worst punishment he could think of for his selfishness, inflicted not on him but on Serena, by submerging her in Serenity's flash-form.

No. He wouldn't let it happen. He had promised her._"I won't let it take you."_

And he wasn't going to break any more of his promises to her.

Darien seized the rope and dug his fingernails into it, pulling as hard as he had when Venus nearly killed her so long ago. The memories that burst to the surface of his mind weren't right, weren't hers. _Her mother's unyielding face the fear seething beneath it only Jupiter and Mars were not frightened by her they ignored her instead she hated them both only Endy loved her his cold armor he was like a planet with his own atmosphere around him warm and sweet-smelling when he held her in the moon's cold air silver eyes he wanted to kiss her terror –_

The terror was Serena's. He recognized the flavor from when he had broken into her mind and seen Diamond in her bedroom. He latched onto that small space of her-ness and shoved at it everything he could think of to remind her of who she was, just as she had shoved the memory of her small teeth and hands and limbs into him to bring him from animal to human. Her golden hair sifting through his fingers as he braided it in Elysion. The taste of the chocolate milkshake she'd let him have a sip of once. The softness of her scarred face when she smiled at Rini. Her white dream flower with its transformation brooch inside, her father's face when Darien had showed up on the Tsukinos' doorstep Christmas morning, an odangoed Senshi in blue and red wailing with flashing barrettes, the warm weight of her hand on his head–

Light exploded for the second time in as many minutes. Memories from Serena–_Serena_, not Serenity–sprayed back at him like hot sparks. Masks and tiaras the smell of children's shampoo as she kissed Rini's forehead after tucking her into bed Lita in her prom dress Ami crying against her locker you're an angel muffinhead warm arms fastening a locket around her neck as they sat in her tree…

Darien blinked away the sparkles. Serena was crawling from his lap. The golden moon still shone beneath her bangs. But her hair was blonde again, her eyes a red-rimmed blue. She wore her track uniform again, her hoodie as white and unstained as her fuku had been red-soaked with blood.

The princess's motionless body lay barely a foot away from them. The cloak that had covered her face had soaked up only some of her blood. The rest had leaked into a puddle, seeping into Serena's trailing gold hair. When she pushed herself shakily to her feet, it dripped from the ends of her golden ponytails. She stared down at it, her face trembling.

"Serenity." It was Endymion. He moved forward to catch Serena as her knees buckled. "Serenity–!"

Serena shoved back to her feet, stumbling away from the prince. She didn't look at him, or at Darien. She screamed, "Rini!"

There was no answer. Her scream rang in the echoing silence that had taken over when all the youma vanished, the bleeding silence of the moon.

"Rini," Endymion said suddenly. "You mean the child. Our daughter." Without waiting for an answer, he seized her arm and spun her to him. "I have her. She is safe. Do not distress yourself, beloved, I am here. We shall go to her–"

Serena stared at his hand around her arm. Then at him. She seemed confused, dazed as though concussed. A sound escaped her.

Endymion swept her body to his. "Hush, my love. That demoness is gone. We have been given a second chance. I will mend everything. You need fear no longer."

Serena put a hand to the chest plate of his armor. She pushed away from him, stumbling. Endymion's arms fell from around her, shock scrawled across his face. He stared at her.

"I–I'm not Serenity." She wouldn't look at him, didn't look at Darien. "I'm sorry." Her voice broke. "I'm so, so sorry."

The prince recovered quickly. "Nonsense. You are confused, my love. Our crystals have sent us a gift. They have returned you to life in a Terran body. So that now you may live safely on Earth with me."

Serena pushed his arms away again. "_No_." Her crystal sword was suddenly in her hands. She turned toward Darien, reaching for him.

Endymion's eyes flared. Gray vines erupted from the ground and lashed around Darien, slamming him into the ground. At the same time, the sword in Serena's hands flashed and then disintegrated into a pile of black dust.

"The shock of your Senshi's death has undone you." He seized her arm and swung her back to him. "You are not yourself. Forgive me, Serenity." He touched her temples, and everything went dark.


	41. Chapter 40

**A/N**: Thanks so much for the stupendous reviews, everyone! It made me really happy to see everyone's response to a chapter that I have been working on since the beginning of Season 2.

Special shout-out to PrincessSerenity1976, whose review made me crack up after a very rough day. My favorite part: "**…the truth finally comes out. Now let's see who will be the one to screw it all up, because I know that there is no way you're going to resolve this easily. You never do."**

There's a lot of time travel stuff here. I've spent the last two years trying to make sure it makes sense, but it's been so mind-boggling that I'm sure I've still managed to leave gaping holes somewhere in the continuity. I heartily welcome any and all criticisms, questions, theories, etc. about it! (If you want a response to these criticisms, questions, etc., please post them through the Yahoo thread or email them so I can get back to you.)

**Gore ** and **Situational** warnings.

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Sailor Moon.

L

**Subject to Change**

Season 2

Chapter Forty: The Tower, Part 2

L

Rini stopped on the steps when she saw the red eyes glowing in the darkness. Her heart, already pumping hard with adrenaline, began to thump harder.

"I–I know you want to kill me," she stammered, voice still cracking with tears. "But I need your help."

Light flared from an object in the corner. It was bloody red light, emitting from a dark stone set in metal shaped like a heart, hanging from the wall of the underground chamber. It was bright enough to illuminate the face of the Senshi standing at the foot of the stairs.

It was Sailor Pluto.

But not the Pluto who had tried to kill Rini and Diamond. This one looked younger, her face rounder and her eyes wider. She did not look so much like a fierce stray dog as a frightened puppy. She stared up at Rini. "You came with the Nemisian," she whispered. "But you–" Her eyes, as Endymion's had been, were on Rini's hair buns.

But Rini wasn't paying attention to her anymore. Her eyes were glued to the mirror that hovered behind Pluto, her mouth open as she watched Serena opening silvery eyes in Darien's arms. She was alive. Serena was _alive_!

But now Endymion was grabbing her, and trapping Darien. Rini saw the possessive way the prince held Serena, and a sick feeling swept through her. "This isn't supposed to happen," she said, her voice high and panicked. "Endymion's not supposed to–that's Serena! She's not Serenity!"

"What do you mean?" Pluto was gripping the rim of the overflowing fountain to hold herself up. "Who is Serena?"

"She's Princess Serenity's reincarnation," Rini said desperately, but even through the desperation she felt a hollowness to what she said, because saying that Serena was Princess Serenity's reincarnation was like saying the Golden Crystal was a lump of stone. "Serenity and Endymion are supposed to die here, fighting that–that _thing_–and be reincarnated. And then they fight Chaos and have me."

"I…" Pluto's voice was faint. "I cannot understand. I must see. You will…?" She took a step closer, using her staff to support her as she let go of the fountain, and reached out toward Rini's forehead.

Rini didn't understand exactly what she wanted, but she stood still and let the Senshi draw closer to her. A mirror materialized beside her, floating in midair beside both of them, and then Pluto's gloved fingertip touched Rini's forehead. She felt a brief, hot twinge there and saw her face reflected in Pluto's dark eyes: a white crescent moon bisected by four lines and edged in gold glowed on her forehead. A white beam shot from it to the red stone in Pluto's tiara, which shot its own red beam to the mirror, which then shot a silvery beam back to Rini, creating a complete triangle of light.

Images began to play on the mirror's surface. They changed too quickly for Rini to see them, any more than a few snatches here and there that she could recognize, like bursts of Darien's gold power or the explosions of her own white aura, and once, a bright streaking shape. But Pluto's face changed from expression to expression, small sounds like shock or disbelief escaping her lips every few seconds; she must be able to keep up with the images' speed. At last, the images stopped, freezing on one: the Sailor Pluto that Rini had encountered with Diamond, her dark face twisted with cold intent as she brought her staff crashing down.

But the image didn't stop there, with the staff disappearing as Diamond had teleported himself and Rini to the Time Gate. Instead it continued with Pluto's staff coming crashing down–

And the mirror's surface exploded with a hundred spider web cracks.

In its cracked surface, a round black cat face appeared. Not a real cat but a doll, like someone had decided to paint a ball black and draw a cat's face on it. As they watched, it shifted and melted into a human face. And not just any human face: the older Sailor Pluto's face.

"Little princess," it said.

Rini shrank back despite herself. Those blood-red eyes still contained the unbelievable hatred she remembered.

The Sailor Pluto beside her stepped forward. Her hands were balled at her sides. "You're the other me I saw."

The reflection shifted as though it had inclined its head. "I am."

"There aren't supposed to be two of us." Pluto's voice was tight. "I think–I think I have committed a grave mistake."

"Yes," the reflection said, its voice hissing slightly at the end of the word. "I know. When we gave the Time Key to the High Senshi, it allowed another past to be created. It is why the Fountain of the Past is overflowing. It is why there are two of us. One for before the past was split and one for after."

Pluto's eyes were wide. "Great Chronos," she whispered, and sat down heavily.

The reflection's eyes seemed almost feverish as it watched them. "Perhaps–" it rasped, then its voice broke. It cleared its throat and started again, "Perhaps you should show me what has happened in that past."

Sailor Pluto nodded and stood up. She touched the tip of her staff to the mirrors. Colors swirled across the broken pieces, obscuring all of the reflection except its blood-red eyes. They watched the images without blinking.

When the colors faded, revealing the reflection's face once more, it was smiling. The corners of its eyes gleamed wetly. "You will do nothing. This is what I have fought for. The princess has her prince and her life. She has freedom from the High Senshi."

Pluto stared at her future self. "What do you mean? What about the prophecy? And Chaos–?"

"What do we care for Chaos?" the reflection said huskily. "Let the High Senshi kill Chaos. They had their chance to use our princess. They promised us that she would be safe, didn't they? They swore that if we gave them a Time Key, whoever they sent would kill Endymion only and leave the princess untouched. But how else would the Black Moon prince have known the spells to free Metallia? They were High Council binding spells, known only to council members." It leaned forward, the mirror filled by its suddenly glowing, furious eyes. "_They told him how to unleash Metallia on us_."

The Pluto beside Rini was paling beneath her dark skin, her lips turning an unhealthy color. "Then we–"

"Enabled them to do it," finished the reflection in a whisper. It pulled back, swiping a gloved hand across its wet eyes. "But this will be our vengeance on them. Serenity shall emerge through her flash-form in her reincarnation and live together with Endymion. She will live the second life that Queen Selenity died to give her, and the child she spawns with Endymion will flourish as Chaos swallows the High Senshi's systems one after another–"

There was suddenly a flash of golden light so bright it sent black spots dancing across Rini's vision. She flinched backward with Sailor Pluto, both of them snatching their hands to their eyes.

The light had come from within the mirror. As Rini pulled her hands from her spot-filled vision, she saw Pluto's reflection slumping out of the mirror. Blood trickled from her mouth, and her eyes were blank.

She was dead.

Behind her, there was a figure barely visible through the thick fog. Gold glowed from it. Rini's chest constricted as though a giant hand had grabbed her and squeezed. She cried out and snatched at Pluto's skirt. "Smash it. Smash it!"

Pluto swung her staff into the mirror, shattering it. Sparkling motes of gold light fell to the ground with the shards. Rini watched them, panting hard. Then she realized that Pluto was gripping her arm so tight it felt like she was bruising the bone. Her eyes, wide and red, gripped Rini just as tightly. "Was that–?"

Rini stared at the mirror shards. "I think so." She did not bother to ask how Pluto knew.

"He knows where you were," Pluto said, her eyes going to the shards as well. Then she shut them, pressing her hands over her eyes. "Great Chronos," she whispered. "What have I done?"

Rini's stomach was twisting with fear. This was her fault. And there were punishments for those who interfered with time. "What are you going to do to me?" she blurted out.

Pluto's eyes swung down to her distractedly. "What?" Then, as her eyes rounded with realization, she fell into a crouch beside her. "Small Lady, no! I am not going to do anything to you. I would never–I could never–" Her eyes went to the shards of mirror on the wet floor, and pain flashed across her dark face. "But I did try, didn't I? In the future." She shook her head, eyes not moving from the mirror shards.

Rini nodded slowly. This past self of Pluto was turning out to be as different from the Pluto she had met in the future as Endymion and Serenity were from Darien and Serena. She found herself, somehow, wanting to comfort the Senshi.

"I don't understand," she said, trying to make Pluto look away from the broken mirror shards. "The other Sailor Pluto knew that Diamond would come back and let Metallia out. So…if she already knew that, that means this is what always happened? So everything is going to turn out the way it already has? Endymion will die, and Darien and Serena will…"

But Sailor Pluto was shaking her head. "No." She looked pained. "You did not see it, when I showed my future self in the mirror what had happened?"

Rini shook her head. The images had spun and flashed by too quickly for her to see more than glimpses.

Pluto's pained expression deepened. "The past has fragmented," she said. "There should only be one. Always, only one. In the past that should have happened, I would not have given the Time Key away and Diamond would not have been able to come here. Metallia would have remained sealed, and everyone would have lived."

She paused, pressing her lips together so that her dark skin around them turned pale. Then she continued. "But in the past that _did_ occur, because we did give the High Senshi a Time Key and they gave it to Diamond, Diamond managed to come to the past, alone, and was unable to make it through the palace wards. He freed Metallia to aid him, and she killed him for his power, and then used Beryl to kill everyone else in the Silver Millennium. And they were reincarnated as you told me they all should be."

"Then what changed…?" Rini began, then fell silent. Comprehension began to dawn in her eyes.

"My future self interfered," Pluto said, looking at the shards of mirror on the floor. "Driven mad with grief and guilt for giving the High Senshi the Time Key that led to the Queen and Serenity's deaths, she swore that she would make sure the princess had a second chance to live and be happy. To that end, she searched for Sailor Saturn and found her, and set free the princess and prince's flash-forms inside Serena and Darien. And then…"

"They had me," Rini mumbled.

Pluto's eyes slid from the shards to the little girl, who stood with her head bowed, hair hiding her face. "Yes."

Rini's hands tightened around the straps of her knapsack. "I'm the reason he was able to get through the wards."

"But I am the reason he had the Time Key that enabled him to come here at all." Pluto knelt. "It is not your fault, Small Lady."

Rini said nothing, only stood with her head bowed and her hands clenching her knapsack straps. At last, she said, "I heard the queen and Diamond talk about a prophecy. What does it say?"

Pluto caught her breath. Then she opened her mouth–

"Please don't lie to me," Rini said quietly.

Pluto let out her breath again. She wished the girl had not asked for something that would only cause her pain. "It is a prophecy about your parents. Or, maybe it would be more accurate to say, about you. It foretold that the princess would be the only one able to defeat Chaos, and that unless the prince fought alongside her she would die in the battle; but if she and the prince were to be joined, there would be terrible destruction. The High Senshi, and most of us, took this joining to mean a consummation of marriage, and the great destruction to be the product of that consummation. A child."

Rini was silent. This new past, the one that had fragmented from the one that should have been, had happened because she had come with Diamond, because she had let him through the palace's wards and to the princess. And because Serena and Darien had come after her. Because of her, Serena and Darien were now both trapped, and might never exist at all. Only Endymion and Serenity's flash-form would, and they wouldn't fight Chaos, and the whole universe would die.

Surely this was the great destruction the prophecy had meant. A hot tear trickled down her cheek.

"Please, Small Lady." Pluto crouched down before her. Her stance was awkward, but her pained eyes were kind. "I told you, it is not your fault. It is no one's fault but my own. Had I not given the High Senshi the Time Key, none of this could have happened in the first place. But I saw how much my queen suffered from having a daughter whom the High Senshi feared could take over the universe, and in my pride and ignorance, I thought that I could end her pain by helping the High Senshi to kill Endymion so that the princess would die fighting Chaos, and people would no longer fear her potential and despise the Queen for giving birth to her." She clenched her fist on her knees, nails digging into her palm. "It is my fault. I should have followed the Laws. I should have remembered that Chronos created them for a reason."

Rini's tears were falling faster now. _And I should have listened to Serena_, she thought. She should have stayed put in Elysion, not left, not trusted Diamond. She should have believed in Serena and her promise that everything would be alright. Now she had as good as killed Serena. She would become Princess Serenity and never remember that Serena had even existed. Never remember Sammy, or Lita or Motoki, or Buji or Asanuma…or Darien.

"There has to be something we can do!" she burst out, voice thick with tears. "If we can just find my dad–!" She hadn't forgotten the way Darien had looked when he came to save them from Rubeus and the Wiseman, the air buckling all around him from his power. But the memory of Endymion, and how easily he had trapped Darien with those vines, was even more vivid.

"No." Pluto was shaking her head. "The damage is done. And Endymion is untouchable with his crystal…" She stopped. Her eyes, fastened on the distance, focused suddenly on Rini. "Wait."

Rini stared back at her, confused. Wordlessly, Pluto turned and extended her staff into the air. A mirror swirled into existence around the staff's end, and Rini's face, pale and frightened, appeared inside it. "_So everything is going to turn out the way it already has? Endymion will die, and Darien and Serena will…"_

Pluto turned her staff. The mirror disappeared. She turned to Rini with a decisive hardness to her red eyes. She had a plan. But there was one thing that needed to be done first. She summoned a mirror from the fog and called out the name of the Senshi she had seen her future self speak to.

"Sailor Lanai?"

L

"…none of the Senshi survived…"

"…clamoring for their princess, Your Majesty…"

"…the Shittenou's bodies have not been found…"

The voices drifted in and out of her consciousness like songs from a badly-tuned radio. She had a vague memory of trying to wake up, of being pushed gently back down by a warm hand, of gold and darkness…of silver…

At last she woke and there was no one to push her back into slumber. The first thing she saw was a single long strand of silver hair on the dark sheets across which her own blonde hair spilled. The first thing she felt was a heavy warm weight on the dip of her waist, pressed against her back. Both of them made her stiffen.

Her tension woke up the body behind her. The man pushed himself up on his elbows and leaned over her to cup her face in his hand. He was Darien but not, his eyes blue and face a healthy tan.

The memory of everything that had happened washed over her. Serena bolted up–or tried to, but Prince Endymion was still draped over her, pinning her, and he did not move away to let her sit up. Instead, his eyes studied hers as though he had expected her to try to get away.

"You are still not yourself," he said at last. "Do you still hurt?" His voice was low and husky, his thumb rubbing back and forth across her hip. The friction made Serena recoil even as something inside her closed long-lashed eyes in pleasure at the sensation. She shut her own eyes, biting down on her lip, trying to avoid the penetrating blue gaze that seemed to bring Serenity closer to the surface.

"You," she began, but Endymion was leaning forward, his weight moving her from her side onto her back. Belatedly, she realized that someone had dressed her in some filmy white gown so thin that it practically wasn't there at all.

"Try to remember, Serenity," Endymion murmured. He was pressed so close to her that the thrum of his chest as he spoke traveled through her own.

"I _do_ remember," she said desperately, her voice close to tears. She shoved her hands at him, trying to push him backward even though the weight felt so good. "I'm not Serenity. I'm–"

But there she broke off. There hadn't been time to think after she saw that dead girl with the silver odangos on the ground because she had needed to save Darien. But as this man who had tried to kill Darien called her Serenity, she felt for the first time the impact of who that dead girl had been. Who _she_ was. The Moon Princess's reincarnation. The person destined to fight Chaos. Darien's soul mate.

And Rini's mother.

"Mine," Endymion said softly, and his voice was distant.

"No," she tried to say. "Serena." But something was muffling the words as she tried to get them out, as though her mouth was full of cotton. And her hand had somehow made its way to his face and was stroking his cheek, and she pulled it away with terror pooling in her stomach. But now Endymion was gazing down at her with a hunger glowing in his eyes that made him look less like Darien and more like Diamond, and he was lowering his face to her neck and his hands to her body and murmuring, "Serenity, my love, Serenity…"

And then there was Serenity's desire rising up in her, mixing with the terror like sugar with blood. "No," she tried to choke out even as her eyelashes fluttered and goose bumps swept across her skin at his caresses. She could feel herself responding, and Serenity inside her, and she wanted to give in to her simply so that she could be safe from this, so that she would not feel herself being touched and made to sigh with pleasure by this man she didn't know. Only the knowledge that without her Rini would be trapped here kept her from giving in to Serenity. She thought of the memories Darien had given to her, of the taste of chocolate milkshakes and the barrettes she wore when she was Sailor Moon, and clung to them as the desire rushed around her like a river trying to wash her away.

Then there was a surge of auras from below them. They broke like claps of thunder, slapping Serenity's presence clear out of Serena's mind even as Endymion's arms tightened around her. Serena recognized the auras at once: Prince Diamond and Darien's.

"Gaea's blood," Endymion gritted out, and rolled out of the bed. "I must see to those demons, Serenity. Worry not, you are safe here." The door shut behind him. It sent a gust of cold air across the room, making the single silver hair on the pillow quiver fiercely for a moment before falling still again.

Serena curled into a ball. She crossed her arms over her chest and clenched her legs together, feeling in the cold air all the ways that her body had betrayed her. Shame coursed through every inch of her. She couldn't think of Rini, or Darien, or even Lita, couldn't think anything past the thought that she couldn't bear to face any of them again, after this.

"Serena."

Serena's body went rigid. She barely even breathed, clenching her eyelids shut, afraid that Endymion had returned…then the realization filtered into her mind that the low voice had said "Serena," not "Serenity."

She bolted up, clutching the dark bed sheet to her chest with one hand and gripping her brooch, which Endymion's sword had left little more than a lump of crumpled metal, with the other. What she then saw in the full-length mirror across from the bed nearly made her drop both. The red-eyed Senshi from the Time Plane stood there, so close to the edge of the bed that if Serena reached out her hand would brush the Senshi's arm. She whipped around and saw that the space beside her was empty, but when she looked back at the mirror, the Senshi still stood there.

"H-how are you–"

"Please rest assured that I am not the Senshi you saw in the Time Plane on your way here," said the woman. "That was my future self." She went to her knees in a bow. "I would beg forgiveness for both her sins and my own, Serena, but we do not deserve it, and there is no time. There is much I must tell you before Endymion returns."

Serena let the sheet fall and slid her feet to the ground, coming around the bed to be closer to the mirror. She kept her arms crossed over her chest and her filmy gown's hem clenched in her fist, ashamed by how little it hid. "Who are you?"

The Senshi met her eyes steadily. "I am Sailor Pluto."

Serena opened her mouth, then closed it. Of course. Miss Lanai had clearly lied to her about the princess, so of course she had lied about her identity as well. Just like Lita had said: _"If she lied to you about one thing, then she could be lying about everything."_

"The one you know who claimed to be Pluto is in fact a High Senshi," Sailor Pluto said gently. "But that is not important now. The past has gone terribly awry."

Serena's thoughts went to Diamond and Darien's burst of energy, to Endymion's weight atop her. She pressed a hand to her mouth as though to push Serenity back down. Then she met Pluto's gaze. "Please, do you know where Rini is?"

Pain flashed across the Senshi's face. "She is here with me. She is unharmed, but she cannot appear through these mirrors like I can. It is a power given only to the guardian of the Time Plane."

Serena nodded, biting her lip. "Y–yes. I understand."

Pluto's tight smile was sad. "Then please listen. I must tell you this before Endymion returns." She began to explain how the past had been broken, how Endymion now had Darien imprisoned in magic-binding chambers with Diamond and planned to put them both to death, how he planned to keep Serena with him. The present that Serena knew would never come to pass; instead, the Senshi all stayed dead and unresurrected, and she would succumb to Serenity's flash-form and stay with Endymion on Earth as all around them the rest of the universe fell to Chaos.

By the end of her explanation, tears covered Serena's face. "What can I do?" she asked desperately, choking back more tears. "How can I save everyone?"

Sailor Pluto met her eyes somberly. "Endymion must be killed."

L

Pluto had seen Princess Serenity's reincarnation through the time mirrors that she accessed through Rini's memories. She had noticed that the golden-haired girl was different from the princess she had been willing to sacrifice for her queen, but she had been too worried about other things to give it any real thought. Now, with the reincarnation herself standing before her, stubbornly biting back tears and begging Pluto for a way to save everyone, the differences between her and Serenity were impossible to ignore. This girl, who acted more like a Senshi than a princess, was a daughter Queen Selenity could have been proud of.

Then Pluto said, "Endymion must be killed," and Serenity burst across the girl's face.

Pluto recoiled at the sudden new aura. Flash-forms were something else she had been introduced to via Rini's memories, but they had not prepared her for the violence with which Serenity's clawed out, trying to tear through her reincarnation's. The girl fell to her knees, her eyes going wide and swirling with silver, the same silver that began to travel through the roots of her hair. Pluto gripped her staff with white knuckles, eyes wide and worried, horribly uncertain of what to do. From the depths of the palace, she felt three masculine auras flaring in response, one silver-grey and two gold, all alarmed, though one more desperately than either of the others. It gave a pulse, and Pluto watched the reincarnation's hand go to her chest, pressing against something there. The silver began to recede slowly, but not completely, from her hair and eyes.

Pluto crouched as the girl opened her eyes. She could sense one of the golden auras racing toward them. "We must be quick, for Endymion approaches. Listen. Queen Selenity has already made her wish upon the Silver Crystal for her daughter and Senshi to be reincarnated. They are dead and Metallia is severely weakened; all is as it was in the original past, so your present could come to pass more or less as it was. The only obstacle is Endymion. He must be reincarnated for you to survive Metallia's return, and for that, he must die here. Do you understand?"

The girl's face was twisted, her eyes half-shut as though still fighting against Serenity inside her. Her head gave a jerky shake as though to say, _no._

"For the child," Pluto whispered, moving closer to the mirror. "For Rini ever to be born in the future, Endymion must die here."

A sound escaped the girl. Then she forced open her eyes, lips pressed together as though to contain sobs, and gave a jerky nod. There was a new hardness in her eyes for all that tears still squeezed out of them.

"This is what you must do." Pluto spoke low and quickly. "Endymion is invulnerable with his Golden Crystal. You must find a way to take it from him and keep it where he will not be able to use it to heal himself. Then you must go down to the dungeons where his reincarnation is being kept and release him. He is the only one powerful enough to kill Endymion–"

The girl's face had gone absolutely white beneath the tears. "You want him to kill his own past self?" She shook her head. "No. No, I–"

The door burst open, and Pluto yanked herself out of the mirror. She crouched on the ground, panting, watching in the time mirror as Endymion came to Serena, who immediately slumped back on the bed as though sleeping. He leaned over her, murmuring something, and she curled into a tighter ball. Then, as he stroked his hand down her face, she turned her head and gazed up at him. Her wet blue eyes were searching.

Endymion said something else, and tiny stems materialized around his fingers, uncurling rapidly and crawling across her pillow, blooming with tiny white flowers. The girl's eyelids seemed to grow heavier and, after a moment, fell shut. Endymion touched her face one more time and left the room.

"He put her to sleep," came Rini's voice from beside her. The little girl was staring at the mirror with a hungry, heartbreaking expression on her face.

"But she'll wake soon?"

"I think so," Rini said, not tearing her eyes from the mirror. Moments passed without either of them speaking until finally Rini turned and saw the dark-skinned Senshi watching her sadly.

Rini's insides knotted. Somehow, she knew what was coming. "I can't stay here in the Time Plane, can I." She kept her face and voice blank. "I have to leave."

Pluto nodded slowly. "Yes."

"Am I..." She hesitated, "going back to the future? To wait for Serena?"

Pluto crouched in front of her. Softly, she said, "You have a decision to make, Small Lady."

L

It was like waiting to die.

That was the closest comparison Sapphire could make. He had never been in a life-or-death situation before; he was the quiet, sheltered brother, after all, who stayed in the palace while Diamond was the one who went off to consort with dangerous Chaos creatures. The closest Sapphire had come to being afraid for his life was when he had defied his father after his mother's death, and even then, he had been too angry to think about the danger he was risking.

But now, as he waited in this present knowing that Diamond was somewhere in the past changing it to a future that could very well erase Sapphire from existence, he knew what it felt like to have death breathing down one's neck. It was enough to make him shiver and feel nauseous and wish wretchedly that he hadn't told Diamond how he could have the Moon Princess for his own. And that was enough to make him feel cowardly and as if he deserved to die, for a man who didn't prize his brother's happiness over his own existence didn't deserve to live.

He sat in the dark, empty bridge for hours, drowning in these wretched thoughts. Only the sudden wailing of alarm klaxons above him broken his reverie. His head snapped up, and he saw that tremendous amounts of energy were being released at a spot in central Tokyo. Only Senshi or Shittenou could generate that level of power, but this was an inordinate amount even for them. What was Emerald doing?

But then another alarm began. This was shriller than the first, like a desperate scream, and it made Sapphire run to the main bridge console, the color draining from his face. He brought up a display that they had never had occasion to use before, and what appeared there made the little remaining color disappear completely from his face.

A massive distortion was traveling through the timescape straight toward this time.

His fist clenched on the console. Was this it? He felt guilty, suddenly, for not telling Emerald all that had transpired, the fact that she could cease to exist just as he could, at any moment. For all that she was irritating, Diamond had saved her, and she had loved him.

Sapphire took one last glance at the display–and teleported to where Emerald was.

L

Rini was silent for a long time after Pluto finished explaining the choice she must make. Her little fists clenched at her sides, but she did not cry, or beg Pluto to do something to change what must be. Her stoicism was more painful, Pluto thought, than seeing her sob and scream would have been. That was what Princess Serenity had done as a child when commanded to do something she didn't want to do. Pluto had disapproved of such behavior then, but she wished for it now, from these two princesses from the future who listened to what they had to do and swallowed down their emotions to do it.

At last, Rini spoke. "Before I decide," she said, "can I ask something?"

Pluto found herself gently touching the girl's unruly, tangled hair. "Anything within my power," she promised.

"Can you tell me why Asanuma stayed to take care of me?"

Pluto's lips compressed. She had hoped that the child would ask for something that would not bring her more pain.

But she had promised. "I will do more than that," she said. "I will show you."

Rini looked at the mirror, then her. A skeptical frown entered her expression, chasing away some of the pain. "Is that allowed?" she said suspiciously.

Pluto's smile was sad. "What is not allowed, here at the end of all such things?" she murmured to herself, and passed her staff through the air before them. A mirror swirled into existence, oval and edged in dull silver. Its surface was at first misted as though with condensation, making it impossible to see the image beneath, but as they watched, the mist faded and showed a tiny, sleeping baby wrapped in a sterile-looking pink blanket.

Slowly, the image pulled back, revealing that this infant was only one in a hospital nursery full of them. Rini, staring at the baby's cap of brown hair, the only brown amidst the blues and greens and other colors of the other babies' hair, realized with shock that the baby was _her_. Fascination and awe seeped into her, but only for a moment, for then a voice that she would have recognized anywhere spoke from outside of the mirror's frame.

"You're _leaving_?"

The image in the mirror pulled back, showing a hard-eyed Asanuma standing outside the nursery window. He wore rumpled slacks and a sweater and had his hair cropped shorter than she had ever seen it. He was glaring at someone, and as the image widened, it revealed that that someone was Motoki. An older Motoki, who had gray threads in his light brown hair and crow's feet at the corners of his eyes. He was leaning heavily against the wall, not looking inside the nursery.

As Rini watched, he pushed away from the wall to turn and meet Asanuma's eyes. "Numa," he said wearily. "There's nothing more for us to do here. The princess used the crystal to purify those nuclear accidents and get rid of the oil spill. Earth's as safe for the baby as it could ever be."

"Oh, yeah, perfectly safe," Asanuma said acidly. "Until a youma comes sniffing around and _finds _her."

Motoki sighed. "What do you want Endymion and Serenity to do, Asanuma? Take her with them so Chaos and the High Senshi can both try to snatch her away? Better to leave her hidden here among the other Terrans so that even we won't be able to tell anyone where she is."

Asanuma stared at Motoki as though he had never seen him before. "And let her grow up alone? Like Darien did?"

Motoki didn't say anything.

Asanuma turned back toward the nursery. His voice was low. "Darien would kill himself before he'd let his kid grow up the way he did."

"Well, in a way he already has." Motoki's voice was short and sharp and very unlike the Motoki Rini knew. "He's not coming back, Numa."

Asanuma lifted a hand to the glass that separated them from the nursery. Inside, the baby Rini slept on. Softly, he said, "All the more reason for us to be here, then."

They were both quiet for a moment, and then Asanuma turned around, locking his eyes to Motoki's. "Stay here, Toki. You're better with kids than me or Mikai. Endymion won't stop you."

Motoki gazed back at Asanuma and then, slowly, shook his head. "I can't." Asanuma's fists clenched, and Motoki saw. His voice became pleading. "I've seen flashes of Lita in Jupiter's eyes these past few years, Numa. She's fighting to get out, I can sense it. If I leave now, she'll sink under again–"

Fury had bled back into Asanuma's expression. "She's never coming back up. As long as Endymion and Serenity are in control, Lita'll never be able to overthrow Jupiter."

Motoki turned away. "There's still a chance," he said tiredly. "For all of them."

Asanuma shoved away from the nursery window. His eyes were fire. "If you really believed that, you'd stay here and make sure their kid will still be alive for them to come back to."

The image of his burning eyes froze in the mirror. The image blurred, colors swirling and recoalescing, forming the image of a window. It looked down, as though from the third or fourth story of a building, onto a circle of people. In the nighttime darkness, auras buckled around them, colorful and wild. There was a girl as small as Serena with blue hair and icy eyes, and next to her, another with blue-green hair and stormy eyes, and next to her, another with hair almost as colorless as Helios's–on and on, with the only similarity between them the fukus they wore and the blank, hard looks on their faces. Rini saw Sailor Mars, who had appeared sometimes to Asanuma when Rini was supposed to be asleep and given him, in a terse tone, news from the warfront, and beside her was Jupiter, with Lita's face but with green hair and wild, scary eyes, and beside Jupiter was Motoki in his Shittenou uniform and beside him, Mikai in his.

And in the center of that circle, their auras burning gold and silver, their backs to the window, a black-haired man in armor and a silver-bunned woman in a flowing white gown.

The image drew back, widening, until the circle of Senshi and Shittenou, prince and princess, were barely more than blurs of color through the window pane. Until the window was little more than a square of light in a dark room, and before that window, staring down, stood Asanuma. In his arms slept the brown-haired baby.

The blurs of color brightened and then streaked away, fading into the night sky. As they faded, so did the image in the mirror.

It turned opaque and then, slowly, disappeared itself.

Pluto let a few moments of silence pass before she spoke. "Have you decided, Small Lady?" she said softly.

Rini gripped her knapsack tightly. The snow globe Asanuma had made her was a hard, round object digging into her ribs. She hugged it closer and said, "Yes."


	42. Chapter 41

**A/N**: This is a short chapter. Sorry! The next chapter is the **LAST ONE**.

Thanks for everyone's tremendous reviews! I honestly think STC has some of the most eloquent, intelligent readers on ffdotnet. At the risk of being annoying, I'd like to suggest yet again that anyone who hasn't done so join the **STC Yahoo Group**. I will be answering questions about anything that has been left unclear by the end of this season and giving updates about Season 3, as it may take quite some time for it to get up and running. Ami, here we come!

I just saw some clips of young Sapphire in SMR, and is it just me, or did he look like a kid version of Motoki? Maybe he's really Toki and Dare's secret love-child…

**Gore** and **Situational **warnings. (As usual.)

**Disclaimer**: Tell me if you've heard this one before. Two girls walk into a bar. One says, "I'm a lawyer." The other one says, "Don't sue me! I don't own Sailor Moon!"

L

**Subject to Change**

Season 2

Chapter Forty-One: The Tower, Part 3

L

It was as if Motoki had walked back into the hospital. The stairs beneath his feet were floored with the same white-gray linoleum, and the fluorescent lights that illuminated his way were exactly the same. The only thing missing was the quiet beeping from monitor machines.

Motoki breathed shallowly, trying not to make any sound. His Shittenou boots, soft and leather-soled, made no sound against the stairs, but his heart was pounding so hard that he felt sure Tomoe would be able to hear him. Yet as he came to the foot of the stairs and stared down a long white hallway of doors, nothing happened. No one leapt out at him. No voice spoke suddenly from behind him.

Motoki inhaled and took another step.

The movement took him far enough into the hallway to see that the hallway wasn't just lined with doors. It was lined with windows as well, wide windows that looked into small white rooms. Rooms that were more like cells. Motoki's gorge rose as he saw what was inside them. Mikai and Asanuma had told him what they believed Tomoe had been doing to people, but _seeing_ it was an entirely different matter.

His silent, careful steps turned into a run. He pounded down the hallway, going too fast to look inside the windows because he didn't want to see–but then he realized with a sick, sinking feeling that his father might be in one of these rooms. He shuddered to a halt and backtracked, walking quickly. He gave no more than a cursory glance into the rooms, not letting his eyes meet those of the experiments inside.

A simultaneous sense of hope and dread began to thud in him as he neared the end of the hallway without seeing his father's familiar face inside any of the rooms. If his dad wasn't here–if he wasn't here, then…

The last window. Motoki's feet slowed to a stop. His fingers curled as his eyes squeezed shut.

_Please don't let it be Dad._

He opened his eyes and looked into the last room.

A white cat stared back at him.

"Great Selene," came a whisper. "A _Shittenou_?"

Motoki jumped and jerked around to look behind him. There was no one there, only the windows that he had already passed. He turned back around to look in front of him, his naginata held in a guard position.

The cat had moved. It was standing on shaking, singed-looking legs, and trying to hobble toward the window between them. Its whiskered mouth moved, and the whisper came again. "Shittenou…"

Motoki looked down and saw that there was an intercom speaker beside the window. The whisper really was coming from inside the room.

From the cat.

He took a step back. He didn't have time for this. His dad and Mayuko-san were in big trouble, and this was probably a trick, some sort of horrible distraction created by Tomoe–

"You won't find them here," whispered the cat. "Emerald made a void…for Tomoe to go to…he took her there–"

"Her?" Motoki cried in anguish. Had Tomoe separated Mayuko-san from his dad? How would he know which of them to go after, how would he _choose_?

"All of them!" the cat rasped quickly. It had reached the glass now, up on its hind legs, trembling and peering up at Motoki. Its eyes, pale blue, seemed practically to be glowing, and he realized for the first time that it had a familiar crescent-shaped spot on its head. "You have to get to them…you have to save her, I…"

The cat's soft voice lost strength as its paws slipped from the window, its body slumping back to the floor. It lay across the metal grillwork that covered the floor and panted, pained eyes struggling to stay on Motoki's. "I can…get you there…"

Motoki didn't stop to think. He put his hand to the door. Electricity bulleted from his palm, and there was an explosion of sparks and a billow of smoke. The door swung open. Motoki rushed through it and grabbed the cat.

"I will help you," it gasped, "but you must swear…you'll save the baby…before anything else."

"Just take me!" Motoki snapped.

Its emaciated body shook. "Swear!"

"_Take me_!" Motoki bellowed.

A void, black and swirling, edged in orange and silver, appeared before them. Motoki lunged into it.

It was like lunging into a world of sound and color. Instead of silence, there were cries and snarls and a cold voice ordering something. Instead of white, there were clashes of color: Mayuko's pink, agonized face beneath sweaty brown hair; green lines jumping up and down on a heart monitor; red blood spreading across Tomoe's white lab coat.

Motoki landed in a sprawl on the floor but was up again in an instant, gripping his naginata, looking for this father–

He saw him.

He was strapped to a gurney from the hospital, held down by the other long-haired youma, Chiral. Electricity snapped up and down the gurney's metal legs and the metal side rails and his skeleton itself, outlining the bones in jagged, green-white lines. His body jerked convulsively, long breathy whines like a dog in pain might make escaping from him. The sound cut straight through Motoki and made his stomach bottom out. He took an unsteady step forward, trying to catch his dad's eyes, to show him that he was here to save him. That everything would be okay.

But what he saw, instead of his father's familiar hazel eyes, was a glinting gold. Not smooth like Darien's gold but rough like fool's gold, like actual rocks calcified in his eye sockets, his eyelids bleeding around them.

Motoki couldn't breathe.

"The baby!" Sharp claws dug into Motoki's calf. "Shittenou!"

Distantly, as though from a thousand miles away, Motoki heard a low, hoarse scream and then shrill, lusty wailing. Distantly, as though from someone else's body, he saw Tomoe lifting a bloody shape from between Mayuko's legs.

This his electricity-encased hand was plunging through Choral's body, and his mind rushed back into his body. Dust was exploding into his face, gritty against his skin, bitter on his tongue, stinging his eyes. The metal gurney banging and hissing sparks against his hip as it shook with the force of his father's thrashing. The cat's claws digging even more deeply into his leg.

"Would you look at that?" came Emerald's mocking voice. But it was breathless, tight and pained, and where she stood beside Tomoe, her dress was torn and smoking faintly. Blood masked her face. "The warrior who wasn't is finally showing some bloodlust."

Motoki ignored her. Panting hard, he looked from his father's blind stone eyes to Tomoe, who held the crying newborn in his arms. "_What did you do to him_?"

"I gave him a transfusion of some of Mr. Shields's leukocytes first to attack the cancer cells," Tomoe said, apparently unfazed by the cries of the baby in his arms or the gasps of the woman on the bed. He actually sounded wistful. "Then a transfusion of your own when neither of the cell types would stop misusing. But it was too late to have any beneficial effect, as we are finding out tonight. Still…" He tilted his head thoughtfully, "there is hope. I undertook these experiments to find a way to restore bodies that are near death, Mr. Furuhata. If you agree to leave this child with me, I will be more than happy to make your father one of my first test subjects."

Tears of impotent rage and hatred were leaking from Motoki's eyes. He looked back from the baby in Tomoe's arms to where his father still jerked on the gurney, the metal restraints screeching from the force of his thrashing.

"He cannot save him!" the cat hissed painfully. "Not even the Golden Crystal could heal such pollution!" He dug his claws into Motoki's pant leg, looking up at him as a servant before a king. "Please, Shittenou! Would you condemn that child to your father's fate? She is one of your prince's princess's Senshi, what that fiend has done to your father will pale before the tortures he will visit upon her!"

Whatever Motoki would have said or done was drowned out, for at that moment, the youma that had been Furuhata-san wrenched free of the restraints that had pinned him to the gurney. The metal crashed to the ground, and Furuhata-san's massive body lunged toward Tomoe, electricity crackling up and down his frame.

With an unexpected speed for an unathletic scientist, Tomoe slipped the baby into Emerald's arms. She teleported to the other side of Mayuko's gurney, and Furuhata crashed into Tomoe. He pinned him to the floor much the same way that Tomoe's youma dog had pinned Senator Hino.

Motoki rushed forward with his naginata. A few steps away from them, he stopped, his face uncertain. Tomoe wasn't a youma. If he killed him, he would be killing a _human being_.

Tomoe was laughing. The sound was strained and breathless but a laugh nonetheless. "Mr. Furuhata, did you not hear when I said before that I am the only one who can save you?"

The human youma snarled–then his back arched, eyes rolling, a keening sound escaping him. Motoki, still holding his naginata uncertainly, saw that Tomoe had wrestled one of his arms free from under his father and jammed a syringe full of clear liquid into his shoulder.

"No," he said inaudibly, but Tomoe was already jamming another into him. Furuhata let out another howl of pain but didn't move from atop Tomoe. Instead he was pressing himself closer, struggling to get his spasming hands to Tomoe's throat even as the scientist jammed another needle into his neck. There was reddish water running out of his calcified eye sockets, and Motoki suddenly knew, as if his father had said it aloud to him, that he was trying to kill Tomoe so that Motoki wouldn't have to.

Motoki's throat closed up. He lifted his naginata.

And smashed its blunt end into the side of Tomoe's skull.

The scientist went still, his arm collapsing to the floor. A syringe rolled out of his limp fingers.

"Dad!" Motoki panted, falling to his knees beside his father. "Dad!" And then, as his father's body rolled over, Motoki's voice died in his throat. For there was a needle he hadn't seen before, one that Tomoe must have jammed into his father right before Motoki killed him. It stuck out of his chest, right where his heart was.

Motoki's entire body went numb. "Dad." His voice barely a whisper. "_Dad_…!"

L

It was into that moment that Sapphire teleported. He saw a Shittenou sobbing over a human youma on the floor, a Terran woman panting on a blood-covered gurney, her eyes on the corner, where Emerald stood holding something, a hissing white cat clawing at her ankles.

The woman cried out. "Darien!" She stumbled from the gurney, reaching for him.

The Shittenou whirled around, shoving to his feet. His face was a mess of tears and gore, but he shoved himself between Sapphire and the woman, holding her up even as he held a long, bloody staff with a blade at its end in a guard position before him. "No! That's not Darien!"

Sapphire's dark eyes traveled past both of them, trying to fight past the tortured tangle of their painful thoughts. There were two strange auras within this void, and he was certain that one of them belonged to the cat. The other…could not belong to either the Terran or the human youma on the floor, for they were both dead. Nor was it the Shittenou or the woman he held. That left only the part of the room where Emerald stood, a disgusted expression on her bloody, bruised face.

His gaze sharpened, focusing on the bundle she held, realizing it was not just a bundle but a disgusting-looking creature in a blanket. Meeting its unnaturally bright blue eyes, he realized that it was a newborn infant, still coated with birth fluid. She had the red-faced look of a baby that had been crying very hard, but now she was silent, staring at him. Immediately, he realized that this was the child that had dominated the Terran woman's thoughts. Without knowing that he had moved, he was suddenly beside Emerald, taking the infant from her arms.

He teleported back to where the Shittenou and woman stood as Emerald squawked in shock and irritation. "Sapphire! What in blazes are you doing?"

"I could ask you the same question," Sapphire said flatly, his eyes roving across the corpses on the floor, the blood on Emerald's face, the cat now darting from her feet to his own, and the two Terrans before him. "But we shall both have to wait for our curiosity to be satisfied, for there is a temporospatial anomaly approaching, and if we are here when it arrives, we may be trapped in this void outside of time forever."

Emerald let out a high sound of shock and teleported away. Ignoring the disappointment that trickled through him, Sapphire turned to the two Terrans. He held out a hand to them. "Come."

The woman's eyes weren't on his. "My baby," she whispered.

Sapphire followed her eyes and saw that he still held the infant in the crook of his arm. Oh. He had not realized.

"My apologies," he said formally, and supported the woman's shoulder as she took the child into her own trembling arms. He politely ignored the strong odor of blood coming from both of them, wondering why he was even doing this. The mother and her child would make sense, perhaps, as only the basest of men–or Emerald–would leave a mother and her newborn child to die. But the Shittenou? In all ways, he was Sapphire's enemy.

Still supporting the woman's elbow, he looked at the Shittenou. The man was crouched on the floor, his shaking hands hovering over the dead human youma.

"Shittenou," he said. "We must leave."

The Shittenou looked up. A fresh mask of tears glistened on his face. Without speaking, he struggled to pull the youma corpse over his shoulder.

"What are you doing?" Sapphire said, more sharply than he knew.

The Shittenou said nothing, only strained harder to lift the corpse, tears dripping from his face to the floor.

The woman touched Sapphire's arm tentatively. "It's his father," she said quietly.

Realization broke over Sapphire, sick and suffocating. Without speaking, he put the woman's hand to the gurney so she could hold it for support and moved to help the Shittenou lift the youma corpse. Then he gripped the woman's arm with his free hands, and they all disappeared.

L

Jupiter, Mikai, and Asanuma were just pulling themselves out of the rubble that Mikai's attacks had made of Tomoe's clinic when a deafening clap of thunder shook the air.

A shout escaped Jupiter as she threw herself over Buji, who had run over to help pull them out. "What the–"

Her voice was cut off by another clap of thunder as lightning raked through the suddenly dark sky like white claws. It tore a huge hole open in the sky.

At that moment, two Black Moon voids opened beside them. Emerald staggered out of one, and Mayuko-san, Motoki, and a man who looked almost exactly like Darien stumbled out of the other. Mayuko held a baby in her arms, and Motoki had the body of a human youma slumped against him, its lifeless arm slung around his neck. Jupiter's insides sank at the sight. She tightened her grip on Buji, and together they stumbled toward Motoki and his mother.

But then a blinding beam of gold light shot down through the hole in the sky. A gigantic shudder shook the ground beneath her feet, buckling the asphalt, as the street in front of them exploded from the beam's impact. Jupiter caught herself on her hands as the others crashed onto their elbows.

"What just happened?" Mikai yelled as smoke billowed around them and the ringing in their ears from the deafening impact began to fade.

Buji spread his wings, rising into the air as though to peer into the crater that the beam had created. Jupiter's hand shot out and seized one of the gold horns that protruded from the tip of his wing. "Don't!"

Dust and smoke continued to billow from the crater like incense, but now a shadow appeared in it. Two points of gold burned out of it.

Sapphire and Emerald both went stiff. Emerald let out a shriek and flung out her arms as though to attack. The two golden circles flashed–then were gone. Emerald's eyes shot wide, flickering down.

Her arms were now two bloody stumps.

There was barely time for the others to see this before the asphalt around Emerald leapt up, closed around her with a cut-off scream and crunching sound, and then shot back down into flat, cracked road.

"Holy shi–" Jupiter didn't have time to finish before the gold eyes were suddenly moving between her and Buji. An arm seized Buji's wing, wrenching it back with a speed so swift that it swept the smoke from around them.

Revealing that the owner of the golden eyes, the being holding Buji aloft by one wing as though he was an insect, was Darien.

Except it wasn't Darien. Even Mikai, whose ability to sense auras was the worst of all of them, could tell that. Although the man, who wore black and gold armor and had Terra's symbol glowing the same gold as his eyes tattooed on his forehead beneath night-black hair, looked identical to their friend, his aura wasn't Darien's. Had Lita been forced to make a comparison, she would have said that it felt more like the general Malachite's aura had after Metallia had possessed him, but the power of that aura had paled before this man's.

As they watched, the being who was not Darien turned his head toward them. His nostrils were flared like a predator catching a scent. Believing him distracted, Asanuma made a grab to free Buji.

Not-Darien's eyes flashed. There was an indescribable sound, as though Buji's wing was being wrenched from his body. The little boy screamed.

There was a flurry of motion as Buji thrashed and Asanuma grabbed for him. Jupiter shouted out and rushed forward. With a sweep of the man's hand that was too fast for any of them to see, Jupiter and Asanuma were whipped across the street, slamming into a shop's display windows. The sound of shattering glass mixed with the sound of Mayuko's screams and her baby's renewed crying.

Buji dangled in the man's grip by one of his horns. His feet hung above the ground, the tip of his limp, broken wing brushing the sidewalk. His face was as pallid as his white scales, his mouth and eyelids parted weakly. Motoki grabbed for him as Mikai dropped to the ground and slapped his hands together. Concrete lunged up from the sidewalk, just as it had around Emerald, and crashed around Not-Darien's legs–

Which weren't there anymore.

Mikai whipped his head back just in time to see golden eyes flaring behind him. He ducked. But not fast enough. Along with Motoki, he crashed into to the ground, his nose streaming blood and his hands caught in the very concrete that he had summoned.

"Stop it!" Buji screamed.

Mikai blinked through sweat and black dots sparking his vision to see that the boy was in a heap on the ground, struggling to push himself up with his hands. His face was still deathly white in the dusk, but his horns glowed gold.

He whispered in a shaking voice, "What did you do to Darien?"

The glance that Not-Darien cast him was dismissive and held not a spark of recognition. "Where is she?"

"She who?"

"Do not pretend. You reek of her." The man's golden eyes were slitted now, like a cat's. Glistening fangs inched down over his lip. "You are her priest. You would not be here if she was not. I sensed her power."

He was talking about Rini. Buji only had time to realize this before the man seized his throat and slammed him against a lamppost. Agony crumpled him like tin foil. A memory spattered through his mind, and he struggled to draw enough breath into his throat to talk.

"Toki," he croaked, seeing that Motoki was the only Shittenou still able to move. "Helios...prophecy…Darien…with Chaos…gotta kill him…"

Not-Darien slammed Buji harder into the post, cutting off his voice. Black bled across Buji's vision–

A scarlet beam of light sailed through the air. It hit Not-Darien's armored man's neck with a shower of bloody red sparks.

"Release the boy," a voice commanded from above.

With the hand that wasn't holding Buji's neck, the man reached behind him. He pulled the arrow, which was now glowing with the faint light of a dying ember, from his neck. Bronze sparks sprayed from the wound.

Buji, still held crushed against the post, didn't have the energy to look up. Jupiter and Asanuma, who were struggling with agonizing effort out of the debris their impact had made of the store window, did. They saw a familiar shape silhouetted against the night sky where she stood atop a parked car. It was a Senshi. A Senshi with crimson eyes glinting in the darkness and a red stone glowing at her chest, illuminating a bloodied, tunic-like fuku.

"Miss _Lanai_?"

The crimson eyes flicked dispassionately down to Asanuma. Then they lifted back to the man who looked like Darien. She held a paintbrush in her gloved fist.

"Release him," she said again.

"High Senshi." The man bared his teeth–more fangs than teeth–with a hiss. "You _dare_ to command me on my own planet?"

Miss Lanai was one of the High Senshi they had been warned about for so long? Jupiter and Asanuma exchanged shocked looks. But there was no time to think about it. The man had said that Earth was his own planet, which meant that he _was_ Darien after all.

"Darien!" Asanuma yelled, struggling to get to his feet. Motoki saw him and rushed immediately to help him up, looping his arm over his shoulder. "That's Buji! _Buji_! He's practically your little brother! Let him go, Darien!"

"He's not Darien," Lanai called loudly. Her arrow and eyes were still trained on the black-haired man. "He's Endymion."

Shock rippled through the group, as palpable as the impact the beam of light had made when it crashed into the ground. No one moved, no one even seemed to breathe as Endymion released Buji, letting his limp body slide to the ground, and turned to face Lanai.

"In his future," Lanai continued, her voice loud and carrying for all of them to hear, "Sailor Pluto woke Saturn to keep the princess from going to hell. Then she freed the princess's flash-form inside Serena, and in turn, it freed Endymion's inside Darien. They took over your friends' bodies."

She shifted her stance to keep her arrow trained on Endymion as he took a step toward her. Two shadows appeared behind her in the darkness; Endymion hissed when he saw them.

"The Senshi's flash-forms awakened in response to the princess's," Lanai said. "They left with Serenity and Endymion to fight Chaos, and you Senshi and Shittenou went with them, spending years away from Earth until Serenity gave birth to a child. The child was left on Earth with a Shittenou guardian until, a few years later, Chaos trapped Serenity as she fought against It. It said that It would only free her if Endymion brought their child to it. Endymion came back to Earth for their child then, but because of a warning from her Elysian priest, she escaped to the past. And since then, Endymion has been searching space and time for her."

"Until today," said Endymion, and his voice was low and dangerous.

"Until today," Lanai said. And loosed her arrow.


	43. Chapter 42

**A/N**: This is the last chapter of Season 2. Relevant reminder: remember Chapter 34 when Ikuko took Rini aside to ask her about a homework assignment her teacher hadn't turned in?

** Song** for this chapter: "Held" by Natalie Grant. The chapter's title comes from a stanza in Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Mother of Nothing:"

_You who stand at pre-school fences_

_watching the endless tumble and slide,_

_who answer the mothers' Which one is yours?_

_with blotted murmur and turning away._

**Gore**, **Situational **and **Middle Book Syndrome **warnings.

** Disclaimer**: I do not own Naomi Shihab Nye's poem "Mother of Nothing." Nor do I own Sailor Moon.

L

**Lastly, and most importantly, I would like to take this moment to dedicate STC, in its entirety, to JadeEye**. I wouldn't be writing anything at all if not for you.

L

**Subject to Change**

Season 2

Chapter Forty-Two: Mother of Nothing

L

When Serena woke again in Endymion's bed, Serenity was screaming inside her. Her anger pounded against Serena's mind like a prisoner's fist against cell walls. She wouldn't let Serena hurt Endymion, she _wouldn't let her touch him–_

Tears rolled down Serena's cheeks. Serenity's pain was not her own, but she knew exactly how it felt. The terror, the need to do anything if it would save Darien from dying.

Serena began to slip. Silver crept from the roots of her hair as she thought of Darien and what would happen if she stayed in the past with Endymion, protected from Chaos by his blistering power and his fiery blue eyes, and he would protect her, and they would be _happy_ instead of worrying about people who never cared about her and no one would be able to touch them and he _loves me and I will not let you kill him!_

Her body stumbled to the floor. Her hands clenched in her hair, fingernails digging into her scalp until they drew blood, and she gasped, not with pain but with memory because she could remember pain like this: burning, wet pain on her head, a whip and shaking arms and whispers of "Odango, wake _up_."

The memories were like a rope. Serena crawled up them, panting, hurting, struggling against Serenity's crushing power. But it was hard, so harder, and it seemed cruelly unfair that she could stand against Diamond's hypnosis as Serenity could not but she couldn't stand against _Serenity–_

Serena's eyes snapped open. She squinted as thought against a very bright light, spots of blue swirling back into her silver eyes. Swaying, she rocked to her feet. Hands splayed against the wall for support, she made her way through Endymion's rooms to the outermost door. It was flanked by two guards in mesh tunics. Wordlessly, she pressed down on their minds with an intention that was hers and a power that was Serenity's. They slumped to the floor. She stumbled over them, and then down corridor after corridor, always heading toward the pulse of two familiar auras.

Darien's flared with recognition as she came half shuffling, half falling, down the dungeon's stone steps. Serena did not have the room in her mind to attempt to conceal her aura or even to shield herself from the rope. His relief and panic burst into her like a cherry bitten open on her tongue. She felt herself beginning to gag. She forced the feeling back and stumbled past the cell where she could feel him to the cell where a metallic, darkly eager aura waited instead.

"Princess," Diamond murmured through the slats. He sounded dazed and uncertain, not like the confident man who had hypnotized her each night. "You've come for me."

Serena put glowing hands to his door.

L

Back in Endymion's bedchamber half an hour later, Serena could feel Darien pounding at the door to her mind, the same way he had begun to slam his shoulders against his cell door as he sensed her releasing Diamond from his cell. But just as the sound of his shoulders against the stone had faded as she and Diamond stumbled up the stairs back toward Endymion's chambers, the sensation of Darien's aura pounding against hers faded as she let more of Serenity's consciousness filter into her. Serena poured it carefully, her control trembling like fatigued fingers, as though she was pouring batter into the bowls in a cupcake pan, being careful not to pour too much lest the batter swell up and over and swallow her.

Diamond had stepped not-quite-steadily into one of his voids, bleeding badly from several wounds that burned with Endymion's aura. She had had the energy to heal the worst of them but had dared not to do too much, fearing that if she restored him too much he would have the strength the overpower her. She was not quite sure she trusted him despite the agreement they had come to, that in return for her promising him what he wanted, he would stay in his void and wait there for her signal to come out if she needed him. She had pulled a strand of golden hair from her head and given it to Diamond. If it turned completely silver, he would come out and use his hypnotic eye to force Serenity's flash-form back into her submerged state inside Serena.

The more of Serenity that trickled through Serena, the more fiercely the cut that Serena had made to give Diamond the oath he had required of her burned with pain. To Serena, the fairly shallow cut had been no worse than some of the scrapes she had gotten while fighting youma. But to Serenity, who had never fought a battle in her life, the wound was agony. She lifted Serena's fingers to it, sewing the cut shut with silver energy. Serena's eyelids fluttered, the flecks of silver energy suddenly reflecting in her irises and spreading.

Then the bedroom door swung open.

She lifted her head and eyelids. They felt very heavy, as though the planet's gravity had suddenly doubled. She watched metal-tipped black boots and leather-strapped trouser legs step toward her. Calloused fingers touched her chin and lifted her face.

Somewhere inside her drifted the thought that Darien had turned away so many times, instead of lifting her face like this. Then she saw herself reflected, white and scarless, in deep blue eyes that made her feel safe. Not penetrated, just safe and protected, even from the eyes themselves.

"Endymion," she murmured, and felt his grip tighten.

Distantly, but closely enough that gold still lingered in her hair, she recalled the diaphanous white gown she wore. She recalled how to lift and lower her shoulder so that the filmy sleeve slipped down, nearly to her elbow.

Endymion's teeth did not change shape. But somehow, in the way the air shifted around him, the way he shifted forward through it, he seemed more animalistically ravenous than that other black-haired...

His hand came through the hair at the back of her neck to grip it and drew her head to his. The kiss was hard, hot, and long. She could not breathe and did not know where to put her hand, her lips, her tongue. Endymion did not seem to notice. He moved forward against her, his hands tangling through her hair, palming the back of her head, moving it for her, and took what he wanted.

She felt a hole open in her, all the way to her stomach, like the earth had dropped out from beneath her. His hand gripped hers and pinned them to the pillows above her, making her aware for the first time of the cushion beneath her back and the weight atop her chest. She felt as though Diamond's void had opened inside her and was sucking her insides out but simultaneously spewing things back in, grimy, squirming things that made her want to curl into a ball.

But at the same time, she was surging forward against the weight pinning her down, taking Endymion's mouth with the same fervor he was taking hers, one of her hands struggling free to dig seeking fingers into the metal fastenings at his shoulders. The metal bit into the unprotected flesh beneath her fingernails at the same time his teeth closed around her lower lip. Her eyelids fluttered languidly open.

The metal fastenings, gold rings set in the leather, met her eyes.

Blue filtered back into her silver irises. Serena let her eyelids sink shut again and brushed her hand along Endymion's hip, searching for the subspace pocket's tell-tale catch in space.

Her fingers found it and, after a fluttering hesitation, dipped inside.

Endymion made a ragged sound into her mouth. Suddenly he was crushing her to the bed, his mouth on hers so hard that she couldn't breathe. Somewhere inside her there was fierce, pulsing ecstasy, and somewhere else, as the Golden Crystal's spikes bit into her palm, there was deep, throbbing anguish, tears burning in her eyes because she could remember when she had reached into Darien's subspace pocket, when she had thought he was _dead_–

Thinking of Darien was her fatal move. Suddenly longing was pouring through her, and it was a flood that brought Serenity coursing back through its depths.

She was elated, and she was angry, and she was panicked, and she made Serena's body tighten with the emotions, and Endymion was shushing her, "Hush, darling, I'm here," and sweeping her hair back from her face and kissing her neck, and she had her arms around him and was crying into his shoulder and letting Serenity surge over her because it wasn't fair that he had to die–

He eased her other sleeve down, the material scraping down her chest. But she barely noticed the butterfly-soft sensation of the fabric or the hotter, wetter one of his lips tracing down her collarbone, because a heavy weight tumbled free from her loosened bodice. The warm chain with its star-shaped weight, somehow suddenly there, sliding into the hollow of her throat, was as familiar to her as the person who had given it to her.

Serena's fingers tightened in the hair at the back of Endymion's head, holding him to her. Her other hand pulled the long shard of crystal Diamond had given her out of her subspace pocket.

Then she thrust it between Endymion's shoulder blades.

His blood seeped into her dress before the comprehension seeped into his eyes. She stared back into his shocked blue gaze, her body stiffening as she waited for his full weight to collapse upon her.

But he kept staring at her, holding himself up on his elbows on either side of her. His breath continued, hot on her face, ragged but still strong.

Not once, in all the nightmarish ways Serena had pictured this happening since she had learned she would have to do it, had she imagined that one stab would not be enough. She panicked and brought the sword down again.

Again.

Again!

She was only distantly aware of him beginning to fight her with suddenly weakened strength, of him trying to pull back and trying to grasp her hand and twist her wrist, because his eyes were open, and she needed to close them, she needed to close them so they would stop looking at her and understanding what she was doing, and there was only one way to close them, and the Golden Crystal was burning between her breasts as hot as a kiss and as sharp as a bite–

Diamond came out, then, although Serena barely knew it, a silver-streaked strand of golden hair falling from his fingers, and he came to where she and Endymion had tumbled from the bed, their legs and arms tangled. She struggled to get up, his blue eyes were still open and he was on top of her, still moving sluggishly and reaching for her, and her hair, trapped beneath his weight, kept her face trapped beneath his–

Then suddenly there was Diamond's black knife cutting across the powerful cords of blood in Endymion's throat.

That should had been the worst of it. Feeling Endymion's hot blood gush suddenly down her head and shoulders and plaster the filmy white gown to every inch of her body should have been the worst of it.

But it wasn't.

The worst came when an aura clashed against hers as she retched over the floor, vomiting up everything inside her as she sat crouched between Endymion's motionless legs.

When she looked up, panting and crying, and saw Darien in the doorway.

L

Sailor Pluto came for them then. Breathing effortfully as though dragging in her last breaths, the dark Senshi pulled Serena from the puddle of Endymion's blood, tugging her long, dripping gold hair from beneath the prince's unmoving body.

Darien still stood in the doorway. He did not move except for the heaving of his chest.

Diamond took off his cloak and put it around Serena. It settled over her shoulders, red spots seeping through and blooming on the white fabric.

Pluto lifted her staff parallel to the ground and turned it like a key in a lock. A wavering image, like a mirage, of steel-gray sand and lightning-cracked gray sky, appeared. They stumbled through it, and then they were on a Tokyo street, standing beside an overturned car and mound of asphalt that had been gouged out of the street before them.

L

The High Senshi's arrow never hit its target, for Endymion suddenly disappeared.

There was no flash of light to indicate that some attack had done him in or that he had teleported away himself. He was simply, suddenly, gone. The only sign that he had even been present at all were the bloodied Senshi and Shittenou and the destruction all around them. Sapphire, was still holding the Terran woman who had screamed and tried to run toward the child Shittenou when Endymion attacked him, felt her go limp with relief. He did no such relaxing, his muscles still tense and his mind scouring the minds around him, for he felt…

"On your guard!" shouted one of the High Senshi. But Sapphire was already thrusting his hands into the air. The air molecules around him and the two Terran females beside him darkened to blue and hardened to stone, forming a dome just as staticky yellow energy slammed into them. Sapphire staggered, and the Terran woman sobbed out again, ducking over her infant, but the sapphire shield held fast.

"Wiseman," Sapphire gritted out, grinding his teeth. The onslaught continued without pause, forcing Sapphire to keep generating fresh stone as the Wiseman's attack ate it away. Above the sounds of cracking stone came the sound of the his laughter. Annoyance stabbed through Sapphire as sweat trickled down his forehead; if the Wiseman had appeared sixty seconds earlier, Endymion could have gone after him instead of after his own Shittenou.

But soon enough there was little room in Sapphire's mind for such thoughts. The minds around him, shrill with adrenaline, were shredding through his own, breaking down his concentration and interfering with the shield–_we're going to die he's _gone_ Mom my baby where are Serena and Dare–_

Silence.

Suddenly all Sapphire could see was a laughing girl with hair like sunwheat and bright blue eyes looking at him he loved her but it wasn't enough his queen's command he was slipping a ring onto the finger of a girl with space-black hair in buns as Minako smiled behind her happy for them both she didn't know he would never let her know but Luna figured it out resented her and for all that he wished he could love her it was a relief to die when Minako killed him to know that he wouldn't have to live wishing for her anymore and that hadn't changed this time around–

The spate of images and thoughts ended, and Sapphire was left staring down at the battered white cat slumped on the ground at his feet. Energy pumped through him, a barrier between his mind and the overwhelming thoughts, and he knew from the aura of the energy that it had been the animal's. He looked up and saw the infant's blue eyes fixed solemnly on him, and they were the very ones that had filled the cat's mind.

But there was no time to follow this revelation, for at that moment, four massive auras materialized in his senses.

Sapphire spun. Through the glassy blue dome his sapphire had formed around them, he could see his brother's white cloak fluttering not fifty meters away.

Then he saw the Wiseman's energy crash down onto it.

"DIAMOND!" The scream tore from Sapphire's throat. He phased through his sapphire wall, sprinting toward the metallic energy splashing away from where he'd seen his brother. Above the pounding of his ears he could hear the Wiseman's booming laughter. Shrapnel was tearing through his tunic, and he lifted his hands to shield his eyes from it and the violent wind.

Then, abruptly, the wind and noise stopped. Sapphire lowered his hands from his eyes, squinting.

Silver energy was eating through the Wiseman's dark-veined yellow aura. It was narrow at first but grew wider, like the wake of light left behind by a shooting star. As it slowly but steadily pushed back the Wiseman's energy, Diamond's white cloak became visible again. The person wearing it wasn't Diamond. It was a woman with long, tangled gold hair, holding something glowing in her hands.

Peripherally, Sapphire noted that the woman was Sailor Moon. But as soon as he saw that she was not Diamond, his eyes had flicked immediately away from her to the three people behind her. One of them was Diamond, his white tunic stained with red. Sapphire sprinted toward him.

Then the sidewalk in front of him exploded.

Sapphire went flying, his body tumbling. He slammed into something hard, and his back turned to fire as he slid down it, crumpling on the asphalt.

"Sapphire!" he heard. There was the sound of running feet, and more of the Wiseman's laughter. He forced his eyes open, blinking back the blood streaming into them. His brother's face panted above him. "Sapphire!"

Sapphire's bleary eyes skittered through Diamond's. He could not absorb half of what he found in his brother's mind–fragments of blood and energy and a thousand feelings, torture and betrayal and regret and why he'd given the moon girl his cloak–but he could feel that Diamond wasn't dying. Relief softened his pain-clenched face. He felt his eyes beginning to drift shut. "Diamond…"

_"I don't know that I'll ever have a more satisfying kill,"_ came the Wiseman's voice._ "I would incinerate you both at the same time, but I think your brother should see how desperate you were to surpass him, shouldn't he, Diamond?"_

Diamond's eyes snapped wide. So did Sapphire's. He struggled to sit up, heart pounding. Diamond was shaking his head like a dog trying to escape a choking collar. His thoughts rang into Sapphire's mind loudly: _run run run_–

Sapphire reached for him. "Diamond–"

His brother's eyes snapped wide, nearly popping from his sockets. His third eye glowed a sharp, violent silver like a shard of metal protruding from his forehead. His hair and tunic flapped as though in a fierce wind. Then there was the sound of ripping fabric. The sleeves of Diamond's tunic tore open all the way up to his shoulders.

Beneath them, a pair of gold cuffs glinted on his wrists.

Sapphire stared at them. A moment passed before he felt himself stagger up, as though his horror had shoved him to his feet.

"Sapphire," Diamond whispered, staring up at him.

The Wiseman laughed, once. The cuffs clinked open on Diamond's wrists.

And he burst into a human-shaped cloud of sparkling ash.

L

Lanai looked away from the gruesome tableau: the stunned look on the man's face as his brother's ashes drifted onto him, the Wiseman's fleshless grin as he watched. Instead, she looked to where Serena and Darien had materialized with Diamond…and with the Sailor Pluto who had contacted her through a time mirror to explain what had happened and would happen.

Had there been time, Lanai would have marveled at how different this wan, uncertain Sailor Pluto was from the one she had encountered a year ago, but there wasn't time. Whatever Pluto had done in the past had clearly fixed one thing–the future Endymion had vanished completely, erased from the timeline–but there were still dozens of other things to deal with. Not the least of which was Darien Shields, whom Lanai could see gradually coming back to life where he stood, blank-eyed and zombie-like.

But even as Lanai saw this, Pluto turned, lifting her staff. It trembled terribly in her hands, as though too heavy for her to lift, but she touched it to Darien's shoulder like a king dubbing a knight, and he went completely still, eyes closed, frozen in time. Farther away, Sailor Jupiter and the Shittenou all slumped to the ground, rendered unconscious by more of Pluto's magic.

Lanai looked away from them all, to someone far more important. "Sailor Moon!" Her voice was sharp, the voice of a drill sergeant displeased with a student's performance. "Where is your sword?"

The blood-covered girl, standing in the middle of the gouged road with silver swirling in her blank eyes did not seem to hear her.

The Wiseman laughed. _"Is your princess not the prodigy you expected, High Senshi? How disappointing."_

"Sailor Moon!" Lanai shouted again. "WHERE IS YOUR SWORD?"

Even at her distance from the girl, Lanai could see the silver in Serena's eyes slowing its swirl. Blue mixed into the silver, and Lanai watched the girl's head rise. She moved her hand slowly up to her throat as though touching something there. Silver light shot out of it, a narrow beam racing up into the sky through the clouds. The red-stained white cloak on her shoulders rose as though wind was slowly lifting it. Then two pairs of white, feathery wings burst out from beneath the cloak, sending it fluttering to the ground and revealing a gauzy, gold- and red-edged fuku. Then Sailor Moon was blurring through the air so quickly that Lanai could barely see her.

What she did see was the explosion of silver-flecked yellow light in the sky as the Silver Crystal's power collided with the Wiseman's.

Something shot out of the burst of light, slamming through Infinity Academy's glass windows. Another blur sped after it. There was another burst of light, brilliant silver fireworks edged with duller yellow. A massive cloud of plaster dust and sparkling glass blew from the hole in the skyscraper. Then a silver light crashed out of the other side of the building, the Wiseman's yellow aura streaking after it.

It caught up to the silver, and there was another explosion of energy in mid-air, this one almost completely yellow. Lanai rocketed toward it, her wings angled steeply against her back. But she didn't dare get too close to the two combatants; their auras were bursting from them every few seconds like bursts of superheated vapor that would fry her to ashes if she got caught in them.

Still, for all the power Moon was slamming against the Chaos creature, Lanai could see that she was slowing. Her speed was declining, letting Lanai catch glimpses of bloody white wings as she and the Chaos creature collided with each other again and crashed into another glass-paneled skyscraper. For a few seconds, there was silence and nothing but the sound of the broken glass showering to the ground ten stories below to indicate that two super-beings were fighting.

Then a white and red shape came flying out of the other side of the building and hurtling toward the ground.

Lanai streaked after it. But she knew even before she began moving that she would not be fast enough. She was too far away and Serena's body was falling too fast.

The girl's impact was anticlimactic. Even to Lanai, who had fought thousands of battles, it seemed that a being as powerful as the Moon Princess should have made a gaping crater in the ground, sent up a sprawling mushroom cloud of dust. But there was only the buckle of her body, the snap of her spine and her head smashing into the pavement.

Lanai swallowed her horror and pity. She saw Jupiter and one of the prince's Shittenou sprinting toward Moon, and she flung a wall of knives like the ones she had used to train Serena. They thudded into the ground around them, lengthening as they dug into the pavement and forming a cage around the two warriors. Jupiter screamed her rage and slammed bolt after bolt of electricity into the knives while the Shittenou–he was the one who had been her student, Lanai recalled dispassionately, recognizing his bruised and blackened face–flung fire at them, but the wall held. Above them, surrounded by Moon's drifting, bloody feathers, the Wiseman laughed harder, the sound echoing all around them.

Teeth gritted, Lanai turned her attention back to Sailor Moon. The young Senshi was still spread-eagle on the ground, her body motionless but her eyes open and streaming tears. For a moment, Lanai's mind flashed to Darien, standing motionless beside Pluto. Then she landed on the ground a few feet away from Moon.

"Get up."

The girl mumbled something that Lanai couldn't hear above the sound of the shouting Shittenou and hissing flames and booming laughter. She took a step closer. "Get up! How do you expect to protect anyone if you can't stop one measly Chaos minion, Serena?"

Moon didn't move, although by now Lanai's boots were only inches from her face. Tears and blood ran down her battered face into the cracked asphalt beneath her. "…ni," Lanai could hear her gasping. "Where's…Rini…"

"You want us to bring Rini here while that monster is still alive and looking for her?" Lanai forced herself to keep her voice harsh as she lied. "You can see her when you've killed it. Get up."

She dug her foot under Moon's back to underline the command. Moon curled into a ball around it, still shaking with sobs. Then she reached up, gripped the hem of Lanai's fuku, and pulled herself up.

For a moment, she swayed. Half of the fabric of her fuku was gone in the back, her skin glinting across her spine as though silver thread had stitched through it, sewing it back together. There was a pop as one of the wing's joints pulled itself back into place. Moon staggered, clutching Lanai's sleeve.

"Listen to me." Lanai locked gazes with her. "You have to be the one to do this. We only have the power to seal him away like Metallia was. You're the only one strong enough to kill him for good."

Moon looked at her. Something burned in her eyes. Lanai couldn't tell if it was fury or anguish or just plain exhaustion. All she knew was that it reminded her of the Wiseman's gaping, empty eye sockets. She opened her mouth to say something. To apologize, to say that she was doing this for Serena's own good, for everyone's good.

But Moon was already a streak in the sky.

L

Breaking through the two High Senshi's barrier was like diving into a swimming pool. Serena felt her momentum begin to slow, her body held back by the barrier's resistance.

Then she burst through the barrier, back into air. She tumbled straight into the Wiseman's crackling, malevolent aura. Her eyes opened and saw nothing but black, the same as when Metallia had absorbed her and Darien.

_"Hello, Your Highness."_ The Wiseman's voice came from all around her. It slithered into her ears like little wet worms, wriggling inside. Serena cringed, pressing her hands to her ears as though to shield herself, but she felt his aura anyway, squeezing against every weak part of her, trying to crawl inside. She dug her hands harder into her ears, eyes squeezed shut, mouth clamped closed, pressing her nose to her knees and clenching her legs together.

Yet his voice still reverberated inside her skull as though he had stuck a tuning fork to her temple. _"I'm not going to kill you, Princess. Not when we both just went through all this trouble to make sure you would bear Endymion's child."_

Serena curled more tightly into herself. She felt sick. _No._

_"Give her to me."_ This time the Wiseman whispered, but the sound was only more intimate and horrible than his normal voice had been. It wriggled inside her like something cold and wrong. _"Give her to me, and I'll let you go."_

_No…_ She wouldn't. She had made a promise. Of protection and comic books and love. Rini was hers. After all that had happened, that was the one good thing, the thing that made everything else worth it. Rini was _her _baby. Serena would never give her up to the Wiseman. She would never give her up to _anyone_.

_"But you already have."_

Images filled her head. A hospital room and a silver-haired woman on the bed, her face smooth and eyes shut as though asleep. Her silvery-lavender eyes sliding open and going not to the tiny infant being lifted from between her legs by the white-coated doctor but to the black-haired man sitting at the bedside with his hand splayed atop her stomach and a proud smile on his lips. The same hospital room with nighttime instead of daylight visible outside its windows, the woman sitting up and curled into the black-haired man's side, as a nurse brought the baby in, the woman taking it into her arms for a moment before putting it down on the bed at her feet and tilting her head up to receive the black-haired man's kiss. One of the Shittenou stationed at the end of the bed stepping forward and taking the forgotten baby into his arms.

The same Shittenou arguing with the man and woman. Being struck by the man. Standing at the hospital room window by the empty bed with the baby in his arms as a rainbow of auras flared and then disappeared in the courtyard outside.

The silver aura leaving her baby behind.

"No," she heard someone whisper. "I'm not her." There was salty water trickling into her mouth and power searing at her forehead and her fingertips. She bit down hard on her tongue and let it tear free, as though if the power could shred through the Wiseman it would shred through the future she had just seen, too, and leave it in tatters that no one would ever be able to put back together. She smelled it, the acrid scent of his burning flesh, and heard the sound of herself screaming: inarticulate shrieks of rage and pain. But his laughter was echoing in her ears, getting louder and louder, and he moved faster and faster, evading her attacks.

_"You can't kill me, Princess."_

"Shut up!" she screamed and attacked faster, her wings whirling and crashing and power steaming and snapping from her fingertips, her movements like lightning and her aura like fire. But just like before, the more quickly she moved, the more quickly he did, too, and suddenly he was there in front of her, a cloud of black aura swirling all around her, the cowl of his hood rippling against her temples, and he was exhaling into her mouth, _"You can't kill me."_

His hands were on her neck and now sliding up to her jaw, angling her head as though to kiss her, or to wrench her skull from her spine. His touch was like paralyzing venom, immobilizing her.

_"Do you want to know why you can't kill me?"_

She gripped his wrists and tried to wrench his hands from her face. But they dissolved like smoke in her hands.

_"I'm Nemesis,"_ he whispered, slipping away, and around her, the way Kisenian Blossom had. Entwining his aura around hers. _"Do you know what Nemesis truly is? Not a planet, but a god. The god of…"_ He slipped around her again, bringing his face back to hers. _"self…righteous…"_ Each syllable faded off like smoke, dragged like a tongue across her cheek, _"…__**anger**__."_

He slid around her again, his hood rippling faster against her cheek. _"Unless you wholeheartedly believe that you are right and that I am the source of all the wrong that has come to you and to those you're trying to protect, you can't defeat me." _

He slipped closer. _"That's why you keep missing." _They were entwined now. _"You know that you've caused just as much suffering as I have."_

A new movie began to play in her mind, one of all the people whose lives her existence had damaged. Haruka, his body warped into something it never should have been, forced to hide him true self from everyone in the world, including the woman he loved. Lita, her eyes and hair a flaming green, every vestige of self-awareness burned away as she aimed a lightning bolt at Motoki. Ami, pale-faced and crying, so terrified of fighting, shoved so deep into her own mind that she didn't even know she existed. Mayuko, her face splattered with blood as she clutched her dragon-horned son with one arm and the baby with Venus's eyes in the other. The list of people went on and on, and it was her fault. All of it.

Self-loathing tore through her, and with it, every vestige of power in her soul.

L

The light that burst through the massive black ball of energy that had filled the sky wasn't silver, as Lanai had expected it to be. It was a dreary gray. And it didn't burst through the black so much as chew arduously through it. But chew through it it did, and the mass of black energy disintegrated into millions of tiny sparks of black energy that disintegrated before they reached the ground. As they drifted slowly toward the ground, Sailor Moon's body hurtled swiftly toward it. Lanai's heart leapt into her throat, and she streaked into the sky, knowing that she was already too late to stop her from impacting–

At the last second, Moon's wings burst from her back. They snapped out and yanked her briefly upward like a faulty parachute finally deploying, and then she plowed into the ground.

Lanai's wings nearly tangled in her haste to reach the girl. "Serena!"

Moon's body skidded to a stop only a few meters away from where Pluto had sunk onto her knees, her staff planted in the cracked asphalt the only thing keeping her upright. Lanai hit the ground running, sprinting toward the body, but the heap of bloodied wings and golden hair was already pushing itself up. It managed to crawl a meter closer to Pluto before collapsing to the ground again, panting hard.

"Rini," Moon croaked to the green-haired Senshi. "Where's Rini?"

Tears ran down Pluto's dark face. "She is gone."

Moon's bruised eyes stared at her. Her lips rustled, "Gone?"

"She had a choice." Pluto was breathing more laboriously now. She had warned Lanai that this would happen, that Chronos would exact his punishment for breaking his laws. She had warned Lanai, too, about what would happen to the child, but Lanai hadn't thought, then, that Moon would be as attached to the child as she clearly was. "She was no longer supposed to exist, now that in changing the past you have changed the future."

"_No_," Moon whispered.

"By virtue of her sheer power, the Small Lady could have continued to exist," Pluto whispered. "But her existence would always have pulled this present toward that future, making it more likely that you would become the flash-forms who were her parents. She chose to let herself cease to be so that you could be yourselves…" Pluto struggled to finish, her dark red eyes already glazing over, "and have a child you could love…from the beginning."

Lanai looked away from Moon's face.

"She wanted me…to give you this." Pluto held out a cylindrical shape. Lanai saw that it was a fat pink pen, a jewel at its end, a roll of paper rolled around it and secured by the pen's pink clip. It slipped from Pluto's fingers as her body went limp and dead.

White hands seized Pluto's throat. Lanai realized with a start that they were Serena's.

"Bring her back." The blonde shook Pluto, her hands squeezing so tightly that Pluto's dark skin was turning white around her hands, and now she was screaming, "_Bring her back!_"

But it was no use. Pluto was already dead, her eyes rolled back in their sockets so that only the whites showed. Lanai looked away from the sight and saw that, around them, most of the Senshi and Shittenou were still unconscious, their state unchanged by Pluto's death and the subsequent dissolution of her time freeze. But Jupiter was stirring, and so was Darien, his aura lashing violently against the unconsciousness and time freeze that still held him.

They needed to be away before he woke up. Lanai looked back down at Moon.

"Sailor Moon," she said. And when Moon did not stop shaking Pluto: "Serena! Pluto's dead! She can't bring the child back."

"Even if Pluto was alive, the child doesn't exist anymore," Lethe said coldly from where she had stood silently for the past while, watching. Her eyes were on Moon, contemptuous. "You can't bring someone back if they no longer exist anywhere in time."

"Lethe," Lanai said sharply.

Lethe only narrowed her eyes. "I guess now the princess gets to experience loss just like the rest of us."

Darien's aura was close to exploding. Lanai crouched down beside Moon and gripped her shoulder. Their eyes met, and there was a vaporizing rage in the silver-flecked blue eyes that was a thousand times hotter than the one crackling in Darien's aura.

A bead of sweat trickled down Lanai's forehead. "Serena," she said, as another rolled down her neck. "Listen to me. You have a chance to help millions of other mothers from losing their children."

"You lied to me." Moon's voice was raw and broken. "Everything you said was a lie."

"Was it?" said Lanai harshly. "You went and saw how it was in the Silver Millennium, and you still think I lied when I said it was disastrous for you and Darien to be together?"

Moon's eyes went to Darien. The anguished expression on her face was like an open sword wound, more horrible and disfiguring than her scars had ever been. She turned away, lowering Pluto's body to the ground.

Lanai reached out to touch her shoulder, then thought better of it and pulled back. "Do you see your friends?"

Moon looked at the barrier that still contained her friends. The Shittenou were all still unconscious, as was Mayuko. The baby was in Mayuko's limp arms, its ageless eyes unblinking, unnerving, and yet somehow managing to look worried. A few meters away from them both, Jupiter was pushing herself up on her elbows and looking around. As her eyes found Sailor Moon, they went wide, and she began banging on the barrier with her fists.

"You can protect them," Lanai said quietly. "If you come with us to fight Chaos, you can make sure that they never have to fight."

Jupiter yelled, "_Serena_!"

"We can make it so that none of them remember any of this," Lanai said. "They won't remember you, or having had to fight. They can live normal, happy lives."

A moment passed, broken only by the sound of Jupiter shouting and hitting the barrier. Then Moon's eyes fell away from Lanai's. She clenched her fists on her knees.

"Do it."

"You're sure?" said Lanai, and then pressed her lips together. Why had she said that?

Moon looked at her. Her face was dead. "Yes."

Lanai looked at Lethe. The Senshi was already stepping forward. Mnemosyne fluttered behind her, holding tight to her sister's wrist, pressing her face to Lethe's shoulder. Their positions changed slightly: Lethe wrapped her arms around Mnemosyne's waist, and Mnemosyne raised her face until she was cheek to cheek with Lethe, looking over her shoulder. Their eyes began to glow, the air around them rippling as though they were underwater.

As Lanai watched, the Shittenou's eyes and those of Jupiter and the woman and her child began to glow as well. They each glowed their respective colors, greens and reds and blues, but the auras of memories that began to wisp away from their eyes like blood from an underwater wound were streaked with silver. As they wisped into Mnemosyne's eyes, her irises glowed faintly silver as well.

Lanai continued to watch each of them–Asanuma, whom she had known from her classes; Lita and Motoki, whom she had known only by name and appearance; the other Shittenou and the woman and the baby, none of whom she had never met. The Black Moon man had vanished, but she couldn't find it in herself to care.

At last, almost dreading it, she forced herself to look at Darien. She had a shock: his eyes were glowing as well, the memories wisping from him, but streaked with gold as well as silver, and he was shaking, lines of pressure forming at the corners of his mouth and eyes like a clay mask about to break, and suddenly he was lunging to his feet.

Lanai jerked to her feet and reached out; Lethe spun around–

Moon reached him first. She flung a hand out, striking him sharply just below his chin. He went limp and still. Silvery memories bubbled from his blank eyes as he sagged into her arms. They wisped slowly over her shoulder to the two Senshi behind her.

Moon lowered him gently onto the curb. Then she turned to Lanai. Her eyes were red and wet.

Lanai smiled sadly at her. "Ready?"

Moon stood up. Lethe and Mnemosyne stepped apart, their eyes fading back to their normal blue, and as Jupiter slumped back into unconsciousness on the sidewalk, the barrier that had trapped her dissolved.

Lanai took one look at Pluto's body. Already it was fading, becoming so transparent that she could see the asphalt beneath her. Within seconds it would be gone completely.

And within seconds, so were they.

L

They led Serenity's reincarnation onto Lethe's ship, a cramped boat of a thing that the Council had probably only requisitioned for her to use if it was necessary to bring Serenity, or her daughter from the future, back unconscious in the case that they had resisted them. Otherwise the Council wouldn't have spared it: spacecraft were too precious and too needed for transporting refugees who did not have the Senshi's ability of travelling through the vacuum of space.

Ignoring Lethe's glare, Lanai quietly brought Moon to the single cabin and told her to lie down for as long as she needed to.

"You aren't going to leave her unsupervised," Lethe said under her breath, half disbelieving, half challenging.

"No." Lanai turned until her back was to the bulkhead next to the cabin's door and slid down it until she sat on the floor. "I'll keep watch."

Lethe stared down at her, nostrils flared, for a long minute. At last she jerked her head. "Nem'll keep watch. You come up to the bridge with me."

Lanai sighed but pushed herself back up to her feet, following Lethe. Mnemosyne watched them both with wide, uncertain eyes.

"Don't let her out," Lethe said quietly to her. Her voice, though still commanding, was kinder when she spoke to her sister. She put a hand atop her pink hair. "Call us if you need anything."

L

Mnemosyne's call came barely two hours later.

"She's been crying for an hour," her soft voice said through the comm system. "She won't stop. I'm frightened, Lethe. Should I go in and–"

"I'll go," Lanai said, and without waiting for Lethe to say anything, she unstrapped herself and ducked back out of the bridge toward the cabin. Serena's sobbing, though muffled, was audible back here, even through the alloy cabin door. "Go up with your sister," Lanai told Mnemosyne.

Mnemosyne moved to obey, then hesitated, hanging back. Not meeting Lanai's eyes, she pulled a small pouch from her pocket. "It's sleeping powder," she said softly. "Lethe has bad dreams sometimes."

Lanai eyed it suspiciously, then sighed and took it. Whether it was Mnemosyne being generally kind or more of the High Senshi's plotting, she shouldn't interfere. Mnemosyne slipped away, and Lanai put her forehead against the cabin door. The crying, though quiet enough, was more easily audible through the door. Lanai stood there for a minute, her forehead grinding against the cold metal. Then she loosened the pouch's mouth and scooped up a handful of the glittering white powder inside it. She stood on her tiptoes to reach the air vent just above the cabin door and blew the powder from her palm through the metal slats.

Within a minute, the crying had stopped. Lanai waited another minute just to be safe, then opened the door.

Moon was curled up in a fetal position in the corner of the bunk. Wetness still shone on her cheeks. Her fuku was torn and blood-crusted, and the blood-matted wings curled around her twitched and shuddered. The girl herself was entirely still, her eyes shut and her breathing unnaturally slow, almost as though she was a corpse.

Lanai went to the edge of the bunk and crouched. The reflections of light on Moon's face looked different from this position, almost as though her silver scars had returned. But something else had captured Lanai's attention. Both of Moon's arms were clenched close to her body, and in one of them, her head bent over it as though it was what she had been crying over, was a pink shape and something red.

Lanai reached for them. A moment's work of uncurling Moon's stiff fingers revealed the pink pen and piece of paper Pluto had given her. Lanai glanced once more at Moon's face, still dead with unnatural sleep, and unfolded the paper.

It was a piece of red construction paper like the kind Lanai had used for younger children when she had taught classes at the elementary schools years ago, back when Serena was a child. There was a slip of white paper glued neatly to the back. Instructions were printed on it: _Tuesday Night Homework: Draw a picture of your Christmas wish and write a sentence to go with it._

Lanai turned the paper over. The crayon drawing on the front was crude, little more than a pair of stick figures with identical buns on their heads eating ice cream cones as the bigger figure read a book to the smaller one. But the sentence at the bottom of the page was written in neat, careful letters.

**I wish Serena was my mother. **

For a moment, Lanai gazed at the wet spots darkening the red paper. Then she folded the paper back up, rolled it around the pink pen, and tucked it gently back into Moon's hand.

Then she rose, crossed to the door, and closed it behind her, leaving Moon in darkness.

L

L

To Be Continued


End file.
